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LIBRARY 


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UNIVERSITY  OF 

CALIPORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


1  LONDON   BOOK    CO. 

I  224  West   Broadway 

t  Glendale,  CaHf.  91204 

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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


BY  LEON  H.  l^ IN  CENT 


THE  BIBLIOTAPH  AND  OTHER 
PEOPLE  i2mo,  $1.50 

BRIEF  STUDIES  IN  FRENCH  SOCI- 
ETY AND  LETTERS  IN  THE  XVII. 
CENTURY 

I.   HOTEL      DE      RAMBOUILLET     AND 

THE   PRECIEUSES        i6mO,  $1.00 

II.   THE    FRENCH   ACA- 


DEMY 


In 


III.  CORNEILLE  (    preparation 

IV.  ftlOLIERE 


HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  igoo,  by  Leon  H.  Vincent 
All  rights  reserved 


mtdsp/jatf. 


I'o  my  friend 
LINDSAY  SWIFT 


CONTENTS 

Hotel  de  Rambouillet^  its  Mistress  and 

its  Guests 7 

Z)'  Urfe^  Malherbe^  and  Balzac     .      .        37 

-i-IIH- 
Voiture  and  Montausier       „      .     .      .        55 

-HV+- 

Mademoiselle  de  Scudery  and  her  '  Sat- 
urdays ' ,     .      .        71 

The  Pr'ecieuses 87 

•H-VH- 

Conclusion 1 1 1 

Bibliographical  Note 117 


A 


HOTEL 


DE 


RAMBOUILLET 

AND    THE 

PR^CIEUSES 


=^ 


JL  N  the  Musee  de  Cluny  in  Paris 
are  to  be  seen  two  blocks  of  granite. 
They  are  '  foundation-stones '  of  the 
famous  Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  One 
bears  an  inscription  to  the  effect  that 
the  mansion  of  which  they  were  once 
a   part   was  built    by  the  'high  and 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

powerful  lord '  Maitre  Charles  d'An- 
gennes,  Marquis  de  Rambouillet  and 
Pisany.  Then  follows  a  list  of  his 
other  titles  and  offices.  He  was  Vi- 
dame  of  Mans,  Baron  of  Chaudulor 
and  of  Tallemant,  a  councillor  in  the 
king's  council  of  state,  and  master  of 
his  majesty's  wardrobe.  The  date  on 
the  stone  is  June  26,  1618. 

At  the  time  of  the  building  of  this 
*  hotel '  the  Marquis  de  Rambouillet 
was  forty-one;  the  Marquise  was  eleven 
years  his  junior.  They  had  already 
been  married  eighteen  years.  There- 
fore when  Catherine  de  Vivonne  be- 
came a  bride  she  was  but  twelve  years 
of  age,  a  child  wife  indeed.  The  wed- 
ding took  place  in  1600.  Wedding 
customs  of  the  year  1600  differed 
radically,  no  doubt,  from  those  of  the 
-+  2  -t- 


AND   THE  PRACIEUSES 

year  1900.  But  in  one  respect  wed- 
dings are  much  the  same  :  there  are 
always  the  customary  congratulations, 
the  fervent  prophecies  of  a  brilliant 
marital  career,  and  the  private  asides 
of  cynical  questioning  and  speculation. 
No  one,  so  far  as  we  know,  had  the 
gift  of  prophecy  to  the  extent  of  being 
able  to  declare  on  Catherine  de  Vi- 
vonne's  wedding-day  that  this  young 
girl,  with  her  '  womanly  seriousness, 
her  proud  spirit,  and  her  rare  genius,' 
was  to  reorganize  society  in  behalf  of 
virtue  and  culture,  and  that  without 
putting  pen  to  paper  she  was  to  make 
her  name  an  inalienable  part  of  the 
history  of  French  literature. 

The  story  has  been  told  many  times 
and  by  able  men.  All  students  know 
the  books  of  Roederer,  Walckenaer, 


ofeC^ 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

Demogeot,  Cousin,  and  Livet.  I 
should  like  by  the  help  of  these  and 
other  books  to  '  resume '  the  chief 
facts  of  the  history  of  those  splendid 
decades  when  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
was  in  its  full  glory ;  when  poetry  waT\ 
thought  to  be  worth  while  ;  when  con- 
versation was  an  art,  and  people  be- 
lieved that  it  made  a  difference  whether 
one  talked  well  or  ill ;  when  the  As- 
tree  of  Honore  d'Urfe  was  the  most 
fashionable  novel  in  the  whole  world; 
when  Corneille  read  his  plays  before 
they  were  played  ;  when  Bossuet  was 
a  boy  orator,  and  improvised  a  sermon 
at  midnight  before  the  assembled 
guests,  whereof  Voiture  was  led  to 
remark  —  and  few  jests  hold  their  own 
as  this  has  done  for  two  hundred  and 
sixty-five  years  —  that  '  he  had  never 
— H  4  •»— 


JND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

heard  any  one  preach  so  early  or  so 
late.' 

It  will  be  interesting  to  note  how 
after  more  than  forty  years  of  social 
supremacy  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  de- 
clined and  its  circle  was  scattered. 
New  societies  arose,  not  to  take  its 
place,  but  to  make  each  a  place  for 
itself  The  old  order  changed.  What 
was  simple  elegance  and  virtue  at 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet  became  osten- 
tation and  prudery  in  the  new  salons. 
Finally  the  sect  of  the  Precieuses  came 
into  existence,  and  by  their  affectations 
made  polite  society  ashamed  of  being 
polite.  Then  came  the  satirists,  and 
chief  among  them  Moliere,  with  his 
sparkling  comedy  the  Precieuses  ridi- 
cules. This  play  was  not  an  attack 
upon  Hotel  de  Rambouillet,  as  we  too 


0  '*'=^!!!!=  >  I 

HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

often  assume ;  it  was  an  attack  upon 
the  bad  imitations  of  a  society  so  gen- 
uine in  its  character  and  so  noble  in 
its  influence  that  Mohere  himself  must 
have  held  it  in  highest  esteem. 


:^8^ 


T 

JL  HE  Marquise  de  Rambouillet 
was  that  unusual  something,  a  bom 
social  leader.  There  are  not  many. 
Very  few  so-called  social  leaders  re- 
ally lead  —  they  i^rii^e  their  followers 
and  do  not  confess  it  even  to  them- 
selves. '  We  dare  not  trust  our  wit  to 
make  our  home  pleasant  to  our  friend, 
so  we  serve  ice-creams,'  remarked  a 
philosopher.  Of  many  striking  facts 
concerning  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  and 
its  guests  this  is  perhaps  the  most  not- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

able,  it  was  a  place  where  people  were 
not  afraid  to  trust  their  wit.  Two  and 
a  half  centuries  have  passed,  and  many 
critical  and  historical  facts  have  been 
brought  to  light  touching  civilization 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  but  the 
idea  which  dominates  all  other  ideas 
is  that  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  stood 
for  the  art  of  conversation.  It  was  a 
place  where  men  and  women  met  for 
the  interchange  of  ideas,  and  the  only 
place  where  excellence  in  talk  con- 
ferred social  distinction. 

We  shall  always  wonder  at  the 
gifts  of  a  woman  who  could  create 
and  hold  together  such  a  society.  Her 
success  must  needs  appear  almost 
miraculous  to  the  good  people  of  our 
day,  most  of  whom  would  do  any- 
thing rather  than  face  the  terrors  of 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

conversation  with  nothing  to  eat. 
What  shrewd  woman  at  this  end  of 
the  century  would  risk  a  potential 
social  success  upon  anything  so  frail 
and  intangible  as  mere  talk  *?  The  ' 
result  of  such  timidity  is  that  good 
talk  is  getting  rarer  every  day. 

Historians  credit  the  Marquise  de 
Rambouillet  with  having  founded  the 
first  salon  known  in  France.  It  is 
unlikely,  however,  that  when  she  es- 
tablished herself  in  her  new  home 
Catherine  de  Vivonne  saw  the  end 
from  the  beginning.  And  it  is  even 
more  unlikely  that  she  had  a  definite 
conception  of  what  had  never  before 
existed.  Such  an  assemblage  as 
gathered  about  her  was  a  growth.  She 
had  the  gift  of  social  organization. 
This  gift  includes  many  elements,  but 
-^  9  -t- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

among  them  obviously  the  power  to 
attract  and  the  power  to  hold. 

She  was  an  attractive  woman.  She 
was  well-born,  talented,  beautiful,  and 
rich.  And  she  was  a  good  woman. 
This  is  usually  considered  plain  praise. 
It  suggests  homely  qualities  and  dull 
domesticities.  Nevertheless  it  must 
stand.  This  great  '  society  leader  ' 
was  austerely  virtuous.  Moreover 
her  downright  unaffected  goodness 
influenced  everybody  about  her. 
Without  perhaps  intending  it,  she  did 
a  most  extraordinary  thing.  In  a  cor- 
rupt age  she  made  virtue  fashionable. 
To  praise  her  for  this  is  not  to  praise 
superficially ;  we  must  remember  how 
many  people  are  unwilling  to  accept 
virtue  on  less  advantageous  terms.  It 
is  something  to  have  got  such  people 


AND   THE  PRi  CI  BUSES 

to  realize  that  it  may  be  good  form  to 
keep  the  Ten  Commandments. 

The  Marquise  de  Rambouillet  was 
the  daughter  of  Jean  de  Vivonne, 
Marquis  de  Pisani,  who  had  been 
French  ambassador  at  the  court  of 
Rome.  There  was  Italian  blood  in 
her  veins.  Her  maternal  grandmother 
was  Clarice  Strozzi,  a  kinswoman  of 
Catharine  de  Medicis.  The  Marquise 
was  therefore  related  to  Marie  de  Me- 
dicis, wife  of  Henry  IV.  She  had 
become  the  mother  of  seven  children 
before  she  was  twenty-six.  Of  her 
five  daughters  the  most  famous  was 
Julie-Lucine,  afterwards  Duchesse  de 
Montausier.  One  of  the  sons  died  at 
the  age  of  seven.  The  other,  who 
inherited  his  grandfather's  title  of 
Marquis  de  Pisani,  has  been  described 

-H-  II  +- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

as  clever,  and  a  sworn  enemy  of  pro- 
fessional beaux  esprits. 

In  the  first  years  of  her  wedded  life 
Catherine  de  Vivonne  took  such  place 
at  court  as  the  high  rank  of  her  own 
and  her  husband's  family  entitled  her 
to.  Her  physical  and  moral  dainti- 
ness revolted  from  the  rude  manners 
and  licentious  intrigue  which  char- 
acterized court  life  under  Henry  IV. 
Little  by  little  she  began  to  withdraw. 
As  an  excuse  for  this  she  could  plead 
the  responsibilities  of  a  rapidly  increas- 
ing family.  The  fact  that  she  no 
longer  went  into  the  great  world  did 
not  result  in  making  her  socially  iso- 
lated. So  much  of  the  great  world 
as  was  really  worth  knowing  began  to 
come  to  her.  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
enjoyed  from  the  first  such  distinction 

-h  I2-I- 


JND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

as  will  be  necessarily  conferred  upon 
a  house  when  its  mistress  has  youth, 
beauty,  wealth,  and  rank.  It  seems 
also  to  have  been  a  home  in  our 
modern  sense  of  the  word.  The  sum 
total  of  domestic  happiness  was  great. 
This  alone  would  serve  to  differen- 
tiate its  manners  from  those  of  the 
dissolute  court.  Virtue  was  hered- 
itary in  the  houses  of  d'Angennes  and 
Vivonne.  '  Life  at  court  and  life  at"" 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet  were  antipa- 
thetic,' says  Rcederer.  And  he  also 
says  that  people  who  frequented  both 
places  seemed  to  change  their  char- 
acter when  they  passed  from  the  one 
to  the  other. 

The  irreproachable  purity  of  the 
Marquise  de  Rambouillet's  life  has 
been  a  most  grateful  theme  to  critics 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

and  historians.  They  reflect  with 
satisfaction  that  the  distinguished  ar- 
tists in  tattle  and  scandal  who  flour- 
ished in  the  seventeenth  century  have 
spared  her  good  name.  In  all  the 
records  of  that  interesting  past  there 
is  not  one  anecdote,  or  rumor,  or  hint, 
which  can  be  construed  to  her  dis- 
credit. At  the  present  time  all  this 
would  be  taken  for  granted;  but  in 
1630,  if  one  said  that  a  woman  was 
beautiful,  it  was  regarded  as  a  striking 
and  unusual  corollary  if  one  were  able 
to  add  that  she  was  good. 

It  has  moreover  been  accounted 
among  the  conspicuous  merits  of  this 
great  lady  that  she  never  wrote  a  book 
or  kept  a  journal.  She  was  an  excel- 
lent talker  without  being  either  epi- 
grammatic or  witty.     She  spoke  per- 


AND   THE  PRECIEUSES 

fectly  Italian,  French,  and  Spanish, 
and  studied  Latin  in  order  to  be  able 
to  read  Vergil  in  the  original.  Her 
vivacity  was  not  the  sort  for  the  pos- 
session of  which  Matthew  Arnold  so 
often  apologized.  The  Marquise  was 
*  good  to  everybody.'  Her  amuse- 
ments were  those  of  the  women  of 
her  time;  and  on  the  whole  neither 
more  nor  less  frivolous  than  the  amuse- 
ments of  to-day.  She  loved  beautiful 
things,  said  Tallemant  de  Reaux,  who 
himself  loved  many  things  that  were 
not  beautiful. 

Hotel  de  Rambouillet  stood  in  Rue 
Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre.  At  the 
present  time  the  site  is  occupied  by 
the  Grand  Magazin  du  Louvre.  One 
buys  dry-goods  and  millinery  where 
once  were  welcomed    such  guests  as 

-t-   15  H- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

Malherbe,  Corneille,  Chapelain,  Voi- 
ture,  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  Madame 
de  Sevigne.  This  is  a  desolation 
worse  than  that  of  Balclutha. 

The  original  mansion  was  the  pro- 
perty of  Catherine  de  Vivonne's  fa- 
ther, and  was  known  as  Hotel  de 
Pisani.  In  1600  it  received  the  name 
by  which  it  afterward  became  famous. 
Many  changes  were  made  in  its  con- 
struction from  time  to  time.  Once 
indeed  it  was  almost  leveled  to  the 
ground,  so  radical  were  the  projected 
improvements.  The  Marquise  was 
her  own  architect,  and  dared  to  change 
the  position  of  the  staircase,  which  up 
to  her  time  had  held  undisputed  sway 
over  the  best  part  of  a  house.  She 
banished  it  to  a  corner  and  built  it  in 
an  easily  ascending  curve,  —  a  thing 
-1- 16  •<- 


0  ^^^:!!!^^ > 

JND   THE  PRECIEUSES 

no  one  seems  to  have  thought  of  doing 
before,  at  least  in  mansions  of  that 
sort.  The  Marquise  had  that  wisdom 
which  is  denied  to  professional  archi- 
tects and  given  only  to  women  who 
know  what  they  want. 

She  also  introduced  the  custom  of 
having  instead  of  one  vast  drawing- 
room,  as  dreary  as  it  was  magnificent, 
a  series  of  rooms  upon  the  same  floor. 
The  guest  made  his  way  to  the  pre- 
sence of  the  great  lady  herself  by  a 
succession  of  ante-chambers,  chambers, 
and  cabinets.  She  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  to  realize  that  a  room  could 
be  decorated  in  any  other  color  than 
tan  or  red.  Her  particular  salon  was 
tapestried  in  blue  velvet.  This  was 
an  innovation,  and  people  commented 
upon  it.     The  '  blue  room  '  was  some- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

T  thing  to  see.  It  soon  became  the 
focus  of  that  type  of  refinement  and 
lettered  elegance  which  the  Marquise 
and  her  friends  represented,  a  refine- 
ment to  be  rigidly  distinguished  from 
the  labored  and  quintessential  preci- 
osity of  forty  years  afterward.  y 

u  From  the  first  this  house  was  de- 
mocratic. It  was  impossible  that 
blood  should  not  count  for  something 
with  a  woman '  who  was  both  Strozzi 
and  Savelli,'  nevertheless  other  gifts 
besides  those  of  long  descent  were 
welcomed  at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet. 
One  saw  a  great  variety  of  people, 
noblemen,  ladies  of  high  degree, 
priests,  soldiers,  courtiers,  poets,  and 
novelists,  and  the  occasional  adven- 
turer without  whom  society  could  not 
exist.     A  high  premium  was  placed 


AND   THE  PRECIEUSES 

on  wit  and  learning,  though  it  was 
hoped  that  wit  and  learning  would  be 
accompanied  by  good  manners.  Men 
of  letters  found  that  here  the  atmos- 
phere had  a  caressing  quality  which 
they  had  never  before  experienced. 
They  were  soothed  and  comforted 
thereby.  Moreover  their  reception 
was  so  genuinely  cordial  that  it  forti- 
fied their  self-respect.  When  we  see 
the  haughty  magnificence  of  bearing 
with  which  some  of  our  modern  young 
novelists  and  poets  conduct  them- 
selves, even  to  the  extent  of  offering 
us  two  fingers  to  shake,  it  is  difficult 
to  realize  that  there  could  have  been 
a  time  when  literary  powers  did  not 
imply  a  large  measure  of  social  dis- 
tinction. But  so  it  was.  Even  Vol- 
taire complained  that  in  his  day  pro- 
-(•19-1- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

fessional  authors  were  snubbed.  Such 
a  complaint  would  have  been  better 
justified  in  the  first  third  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century.  The  Marquise  de 
Rambouillet  did  more  perhaps  than 
any  other  one  woman  to  secure  for 
authors  the  privilege  of  being  received 
into  the  '  best  society '  on  equal  terms 
with  the  aristocracy.  This,  to  be  sure, 
is  not  the  chief  end  of  literature,  but 
it  may  be  accounted  one  of  the  rights 
of  authors  considered  merely  as  human 
beings.  The  Marquise  helped  them 
to  establish  this  right. 

It  is  a  question  whether  there  was 
to  be  found  in  France  a  hostess  so 
tolerant  as  was  she  with  respect  to  the 
humors  and  caprices  of  literary  men. 
She  may  even  have  accentuated  their 
peculiarities.       We    have    heard   of 

-1-20-1— 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

spoiled  children,  and  some  of  us,  no 
doubt,  have  had  the  pleasure  of  being 
such.  The  world  is  full  of  spoiled 
children.  The  world  is  also  full  of 
spoiled  authors,  and  the  Marquise 
de  Rambouillet  was  the  woman  who 
did  a  great  deal  to  spoil  them.  This 
was  partly  from  kindness  of  heart, 
and  partly  from  a  genuine  respect  for 
letters.  Up  to  her  time  poets  and 
authors  generally  held  an  equivocal 
position  in  society.  That  complete 
and  godlike  independence  which  men 
like  Victor  Hugo  and  Alfred  Tenny- 
son enjoyed  was  not  possible  in  the 
first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
Most  of  the  poets  were  attached  to 
one  or  other  of  the  great  houses. 
They  were  '  domestics,'  though  not  in 
the  restricted  sense  in  which  we  now 

-t-  21  -f- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

use  that  word.  A  man  might  have  a 
poet  in  his  house  as  he  might  have 
any  highly  decorative  piece  of  furni- 
ture. He  would  respect  both  the 
furniture  and  the  poet  for  their  in- 
trinsic worth,  but  his  pride  would  be 
rooted  in  the  fact  that  he  was  the  pro- 
prietor of  both.  Roederer  gives  a 
list  of  sixteen  poets,  all  of  whom  were 
attached  to  some  royal  or  noble  house. 
The  list  includes  Clement  Marot, 
Ronsard,  Malherbe,  Racan,  Theophile, 
Voiture,  Sarrazin,  and  Benserade. 
'^Their  respective  positions  were  honor- 
able, no  doubt,  'but  they  were  de- 
pendent.' At  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
the  poets  found  themselves  released 
from  all  personal  obligations.  The 
poet  was  no  longer  a  part  of  the 
household   equipment  of  a  rich   and 

1 .  -+  22  •«- 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

powerful  lord;  he  was  a  man  among 
men.  He  was  able  to  show  his  pre- 
ferences, and  to  decide  by  just  what 
nobleman  he  would  consent  to  be 
patronized.  Better  than  this  he  was 
at  liberty  to  say  whether  he  would 
consent  to  be  patronized  at  all,  or 
would  elect  to  live  independently. 
Many  poets  preferred  patronage ;  it 
was  comfortable  and  they  were  used 
to  it.  None  the  less  it  is  a  great  \ 
thing  when  men  acquire  the  privilege 
of  being  men.  For  this  if  for  no 
other  reason  the  various  Societies  of 
Authors  should  build  a  monument  to 
the  Marquise  de  Rambouillet. 

To  mention  all  the  guests  distin- 
guished for  birth,  genius,  and  learning 
who  at  one  time  or  another  were 
welcomed  at  Hotel   de  Rambouillet 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

would  be  to  compile  a  society  '  blue- 
book  '  and  a  dictionary  of  men  of 
letters.  The  names  are  suggestive  to 
the  student,  though  uninteresting  to 
the  general  reader. 

Hotel  de  Rambouillet  was  rebuilt 
in  1618.  Reunions  had  been  held, 
however,  at  an  earlier  date.  For  ex- 
ample, Armand  Duplessis,  afterward 
Cardinal  Due  de  Richelieu,  was  pre- 
sented to  Madame  de  Rambouillet's 
circle  in  1615.  He  was  then  but 
twenty  years  of  age.  Cospeau  was 
his  social  sponsor. 

There  are  three  well-defined  periods 
in  the  life  of  this  salon.  The  first  is 
the  period  of  formation ;  it  includes 
the  years  between  1620  and  1630.  In 
1620  the  Marquise  was  thirty-two 
years  old  and  approaching  the  '  perfect 
-^  24-1- 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

age '  of  thirty-five.  I  speak  of  this 
because  I  have  heard  a  contemporary 
say  that  thirty-five  is  an  age  which 
'  needs  to  be  celebrated  as  the  most 
charming  which  a  matron  reaches  and 
remains  at.  When  a  man  has  the  priv- 
ilege of  talking  with  a  woman  of  thirty- 
five  he  may  well  abandon  the  society 
of  your  raw,  incoherent  Juliets  to  the 
pink-and-white  Romeos  who  like  it.' 

Conspicuous  among  the  guests  of 
the  first  period  were  the  Due  de  Guise, 
the  Due  de  la  Tremouille,  Marechal 
de  Souvre,  the  Marquis  de  Vigean, 
Arnauld  d'Andilly,  and  Chaudebonne, 
who  had  the  honor  of  starting  Voiture 
upon  his  career.  Notable  among  the 
men  of  letters  were  the  old  poet  Mal- 
herbe,  his  disciple  the  Marquis  de 
Racan,  and  Vaugelas,  who  was  even 
-h  25  -I- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOVILLET 

then  making  those  minute  studies  of 
current  speech  which  twenty-seven 
years  later  were  to  be  given  to  the 
world  in  his  famous  Remarks  on  the 
French  Language.  Here,  too,  were 
to  be  seen  Gombauld,  Balzac,  Chape- 
lain,  and  Voiture.  These  last  four 
were  young  men,  all  under  thirty 
when  this  period  begins,  while  Voiture 
was  only  twenty-two.  Among  elect 
and  beautiful  women  were  Charlotte 
de  Montmorency,  Princesse  de  Conde, 
the  Duchesse  de  la  Tremouille,  and 
the  young  Marquise  de  Sable.  Julie 
d'Angennes,  the  loved  daughter  of  the 
house,  was  about  eighteen,  her  friend 
Madelaine  de  Scudery  of  the  same 
age.  Youth,  with  all  that  youth  im- 
plies, was  very  apparent  at  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet  during  this  period. 
-t-  26  -1- 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

The  second  period,  the  period  of 
greatest  splendor,  begins  in  1630  and 
closes  about  1638.  '  The  blue  room 
became  a  veritable  sanctuary  of  taste, 
a  school  where  the  seventeenth  century 
obtained  its  education,'  Among  the 
new  recruits  were  the  Due  d'Enghien, 
the  Due  de  Montausier,  Saint-Evre- 
mond,  La  Rochefoucauld,  Patru  the 
great  forensic  orator,  and  Menage  the 
scholar,  celebrated  then  for  his  learn- 
ing, and  now  because  he  was  the 
instructor  of  Madame  de  Sevigne. 
Other  names,  suggestive  of  various 
gifts  and  ambitions,  are  Mairet,  Ro- 
trou,  Conrart,  Sarrazin,  Godeau,  Costar, 
Benserade,  Georges  de  Scudery,  and 
Scarron.  Bossuet's  first  appearance 
in  this  circle  was  in  1643.  "^^^  Abbe 
Cotin  began  to  come  about  this  time, 
-1-27-1- 


<5  ■"'''^^"  J 

HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

unconscious  that  his  claim  to  immor- 
taHty  would  need  to  be  based  on  the 
facts  that  he  was  satirized  by  Boileau 
and  caricatured  by  Moliere.  In 
marked  contrast  with  him  one  might 
mention  Pierre  Corneille,  to  whose 
interest  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  was 
sufficiently  devoted,  for  it  took  his 
part  against  the  terrible  Richelieu  in 
that  sensational  quarrel  of  the  Cid. 

There  were  many  brilliant  women 
both  from  the  aristocracy  and  the 
middle  class.  Mademoiselle  de  Bour- 
bon-Conde,  afterwards  Duchesse  de 
Longueville ;  also  Mademoiselle  de 
Coligny,  the  future  Comtesse  de  la 
Suze,  she  who  became  a  Catholic  be- 
cause her  husband  was  a  Protestant, 
and  who  (in  the  language  of  Oueen 
Christina)  separated  from  him  in  order 
-f  28  -1- 


JND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

not  to  see  him  either  in  this  world  or 
the  next.  One  should  also  mention 
Anne  de  Rohan,  Princesse  de  Gue- 
mene,  and  the  Comtesse  de  Maure. 
Perhaps  the  most  striking  figure  was 
Angelique  Paulet.  They  called  her 
'  the  beautiful  lioness  '  because  of  her 
magnificent  mane  of  golden  hair  and 
the  haughtiness  of  her  bearing.  To 
her  was  first  applied  a  phrase  which 
afterward  became  famous;  it  was 
said  that  she  had  '  cheveux  d'un  blond 
hardi.'  Shall  we  translate  it  '  hair  of 
a  courageous  blonde '  ?  It  was  an 
ingenious  expression  intended  to  mit- 
igate the  brutality  of  saying  that  a 
woman's  hair  was  tinged  with  red. 
Mademoiselle  Paulet  had  other  gifts 
besides  those  of  beauty  and  fine  man- 
ners. She  sang  and  played  the  lute. 
-H  29  •»- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOVILLET 

As  a  tribute  to  the  charm  of  her  voice 
they  invented  the  legend  that  two 
nightingales  had  been  found  dead  (of 
envy,  no  doubt)  at  the  edge  of  a  foun- 
tain w^here  Angelique  Paulet  had 
sung.  Clearly  when  the  gentlemen 
of  that  day  set  out  to  pay  a  compli- 
ment they  succeeded. 

The  third  period  in  the  life  of  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet,  the  period  of  decline, 
includes  the  years  between  1648  and 
1665.  At  the  beginning  of  this  pe- 
riod occurred  the  quarrel  between  the 
Uranistes  and  the  Jobelins.  The 
point  of  issue  was  which  of  two  son- 
nets was  the  better,  Voiture's  sonnet 
on  Uranie  or  Benserade's  sonnet  on 
Job.  The  discussion  was  more  than 
animated.  I  liken  it  to  one  of  those 
newspaper  contentions,  humorous   or 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

acrid,  with  which  we  are  famihar. 
The  occasion  may  be  shght,  but  the 
interest  and  comment  are  dispropor- 
tionate, as  in  the  case  of  the  Lady  and 
the  Tiger, 

Many  causes  united  to  bring  about 
the  dechne  of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet. 
The  marriage  of  JuHe  and  the  death 
of  Voiture  made  radical  changes. 
The  war  of  the  Fronde  threw  society 
for  the  time  being  into  a  condition 
of  absolute  unrest  and  disorder.  The 
rise  of  new  circles  where  pedantry 
and  literary  affectation  had  full  swing 
was  not  without  its  effect.  Yet  amid 
these  conditions  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
was  sound  at  heart ;  and  the  names  it 
honored  are  still  honorable,  such  as 
Madame  de  La  Fayette  and  Madame 
de  Sevigne. 


r 


0  ■-*r§=^^  =& 

HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

Historians  have  often  lamented  their 
inabihty  to  give  an  accurate  picture 
of  hfe  in  the  'blue  room.'  We  shall 
never  know  what  it  was  like.  An 
ancient  building  can  be  restored;  it 
is  not  so  easy  to  restore  '  an  obliterated 
state  of  society.'  There  were  times 
when  the  talk  was  almost  transcen- 
dental in  its  perfection.  Men  used 
to  speak  of  it  in  after  years  with  some- 
thing like  awe.  Wisdom  prevailed 
and  affectation  stayed  in  the  back- 
ground. Chapelain  was  able  to  say 
in  1638:  'They  do  not  talk  learnedly 
but  they  do  talk  reasonably,  and  there 
is  no  place  in  the  world  where  there  is 
more  good  sense  and  less  pedantry.' 

They  used  to  have  parlor  lectures 
or  readings.  They  discussed  new 
works.      Sometimes    they   passed    a 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

judgment  which  posterity  has  not 
confirmed ;  but  that  is  no  more  than 
critics  do  nowadays.  They  consti- 
tuted themselves  a  Hterary  tribunal. 
Authors,  whatever  they  may  have 
pretended  to  the  contrary,  stood  in 
honest  fear  of  this  tribunal.  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet  claimed  the  right  to 
modify  and  restrict  the  growth  of  the 
French  language.  There  was  a  fitness 
in  this.  These  people  were  of  the 
best  blood,  the  best  breeding,  and  the 
best  literary  culture  in  France.  They 
might  have  contended  that  their  use 
of  words  offered  a  standard  to  which 
the  general  public  would  do  well  to 
conform.  They  gave  so  much  time 
to  the  question  of  correct  speech  that 
they  were  ridiculed  for  it.  They 
could  afford  the  ridicule.     In  one  par- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

ticular  their  judgment  was  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  that  of  the  mockers  without 
the  gate.  They  had  the  breadth  of 
view  to  apprehend  the  great  truth  that 
fine  breeding  is  not  limited  to  man- 
ners and  dress.  He  is  not  truly  well-  — 
bred  whose  speech  lacks  breeding.  - 
What  if  they  did  discuss  the  ques- 
tion whether  one  should  say  muscardin 
or  muscadin^  surge  or  serge^  Roume  or 
Rome  ?  These  were  not  the  only  or 
the  most  vital  topics  of  conversation. 
Rcederer  answered  all  that  sort  of 
criticism  upon  the  conversation  of  the 
*  blue  room '  when  he  said :  '  It  is  bet- 
ter to  talk  about  words  than  about 
people;*  and  he  made  an  infinitely 
suggestive  remark  when  he  added : 
*"  T'he  passion  for  good  language  ought  to 
be  a  national  passion! 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

In  its  attitude  on  the  great  questionV 
of  language,  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
offers  a  marked  contrast  to  society  of 
to-day.  The  influence  of  the  modern 
fashionable  world  is  more  apparent  in 
manners  and  dress  than  in  language 
and  literature.  Society  is  well  groomed, 
but  its  garments  are  uniformly  more 
attractive  than  its  parts  of  speech. 
Why  should  a  woman  get  her  hats 
from  Virot  and  her  adjectives  from 
Chimmie  Fadden  ?  Not  all  women 
do,  to  be  sure.  Why  should  any 
woman,  any  man,  lack  in  fastidious- 
ness about  the  choice  of  words  *?  So- 
ciety ought  to  be  as  impeccable  in  its 
language  as  it  is  in  its  attire. 


35 


II 


lET  us  consider  three  men  of 
letters  whose  influence  was  potent 
at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  They  are 
d'Urfe,  Malherbe,  and  Balzac.  Only- 
one  of  the  three  can  be  accounted 
an  actual  member  of  the  circle,  for 
Balzac  was  seldom  there,  and  d'Urfe 
never. 

Honor e  d'Urfe  was  the  author  of  a 
gigantic  romance  entitled  the  Astree. 
It  was  a  continued  story  written  in 
days  when '  continued '  meant  long  con- 

-H37H- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

tinued.  We  sometimes  complain  of 
the  novel  which  runs  a  year  in  a 
monthly  magazine.  Let  us  think  on 
our  mercies.  The  admirers  of  the 
Astree  were  expected  to  read  and  to 
wait  with  a  patience  unknown  to  our 
hurried  generation.  The  first  two 
parts  of  the  romance,  comprising 
more  than  two  thousand  pages,  were 
published  in  1610.  Then  the  public 
waited  nine  years  for  the  third  part, 
and  eight  years  more  for  another  in- 
stallment. D'Urfe  died  in  1625,  and 
the  fourth  part  was  published  by  his 
private  secretary,  Balthazar  Baro,  who 
also  added  a  fifth  part,  his  own  work, 
bringing  the  story  to  a  conclusion. 
Therefore  between  the  beginning  of 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  end 
was  an  interval  of  not  less  than  sev- 


AND   THE  PRRCIEUSES 

enteen  years.  Indeed  die  historians 
assign  for  die  meditation  and  writing 
of  this  extraordinary  book  a  quarter 
of  a  century. 

The  Astr'ee  is  a  pastoral  romance 
more  or  less  autobiographical.  The 
hero  is  a  youth  by  the  name  of  Ce- 
ladon. His  manner  of  loving  made 
him  in  the  eyes  of  readers  of  that  day 
the  ideal  of  constancy.  The  type  has 
gone  out  of  fashion.  A  modern 
French  critic  hints  that  one  would 
more  easily  resign  himself  to  being 
called  a  Don  Juan  than  a  Celadon. 
For  the  constancy  which  is  admira- 
ble degenerates  in  Celadon's  case 
into  a  humble  and  dog-like  fidelity 
exasperating  to  the  reader.  Men 
have  been  the  slaves  of  love  before 
and    since    d'Urfe's   time;    but   they 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

have  usually  shown  a  healthy  and 
commendable  impatience.  This  vic- 
tim of  beauty's  caprice  rejoices  in  his 
own  tortures  and  '  adores  the  hand 
which  strikes  him.'  In  his  melan- 
choly, his  inactivity,  his  passionate 
endurance.  Celadon  is  the  prototype 
of  Werther,  Rene,  and  those  other 
handsome  young  pessimists  of  fic- 
tion who  suffer  so  eloquently,  but 
who  carefully  refrain  from  doing  any- 
thing lest  they  mar  the  edge  of  their 
grief. 

The  Astree  had  an  enormous  success. 
It  became  the  *  code  of  polite  society.' 
The  critics  find  traces  of  its  influence 
in  the  tragedies  of  Racine,  the  com- 
edies of  Marivaux,  the  romances  of 
Prevost,  in  the  writings  of  J.  J.  Rous- 
seau, and  even  in  certain  stories  of 
^-  40-t- 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

George  Sand.^  Morillot  declares  that 
nothing  is  equal  to  the  Astree  for  pre- 
senting a  complete  and  accurate  pic- 
ture of  the  contemporaries  of  Balzac 
and  Voiture.  It  is  therefore  one  of 
the  '  sources  '  of  the  history  of  polite 
society.  These  shepherds  and  shep- 
herdesses who  tend  their  flocks  so  grace- 
fully and  pay  such  ingenious  compli- 
ments to  one  another  bear  no  relation 
to  Gabriel  Oak.  On  the  contrary  they 
are  people  of  high  birth  wearing  the 
pastoral  disguise  for  their  own  plea- 
sure, and  as  a  symbol  of  that  peace  and 
rest  for  which  the  world  was  beginning 
to  yearn.  It  is  a  book  with  a  key, 
and    readers    were    pleased    to    think 

^  Brunetiere  :    Manuel,  p.   105.     Jusserand  : 
Le  Roman  anglais,  p.   17. 

-1-41  -»- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

that  in  spite  of  the  masks  and  the 
costumes  they  recognized  eminent 
men  and  women  of  that  day. 

The  Astree  was  happy  in  the  class 
of  readers  it  attracted.  The  book 
which  could  win  the  undisguised  and 
sometimes  unqualified  admiration  of 
Saint  Francis  de  Sales,  Camus,  Patru, 
Huet,  La  Fontaine,  Boileau,  and  Ma- 
dame de  Sevigne  must  have  had 
notable  virtues. 

Malherbe  was  held  in  high  esteem 
at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  Like  many 
men  who  are  self-willed,  rough  of 
speech,  and  imperious  of  manner,  he 
could  be  courtly  and  gracious.  These 
robust  geniuses  are  easily  controlled 
by  a  woman  who  commands  their 
respect  and  admiration.  Malherbe 
was  civilized  in  the  presence  of  the 

-H-  42  -1- 


!^0^'  =ai> 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

Marquise,  and  his  poetry  was  at  all 
times  civilized. 

Malherbe's  verse  was  that  of  a  man 
who  thought  much  but  was  seldom 
inspired.  'He  was  a  poet  of  the 
second  order,'  says  Pergameni, '  a  poet 
by  reflection  rather  than  by  instinct,' 
one  of  that  class  in  whom  reason  takes 
the  place  of  heart.  His  writing  lacked 
blood,  perhaps;  the  man  himself  was 
altogether  human,  positive,  egoistic, 
tyrannical. 

He  reminds  us  a  little  of  Dr.  John- 
son. He  had  Johnson's  pungent  wit, 
overbearing  manner,  frankness  of 
speech,  and  reverence  for  authority. 
He  was  like  Johnson  in  the  want  of 
external  correspondence  between  the 
poetical  product  and  man  who  pro- 
duced.    Like  him,  too,  in  the  way  in 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

which  he  would  browbeat  and  intim- 
idate his  circle  of  worshipers  and 
pupils.  That  anecdote  has  the  true 
Johnsonian  flavor  which  describes 
Malherbe  repeating  some  verses  to 
Racan  and  then  asking  how  he  liked 
them.  Racan  excused  himself  from 
giving  an  opinion :  '  I  could  not 
understand  them,  you  ate  half  of  the 
words.'  Malherbe,  irritated,  ex- 
claimed :  '  Mortdieu  !  if  you  make 
me  angry  I  '11  eat  them  all.  They 
are  mine;  since  I  made  them  I  am 
able  to  do  what  I  please  with  them.' 

That  satirical  observer  Tallemant 
de  Reaux  says  that  Malherbe  was  the 
worst  reciter  in  the  world,  and  spoiled 
his  beautiful  verses  in  repeating  them. 
It  was  hardly  possible  to  understand 
him  on  account  of  the  impediment 
— t-  44  -I— 


AND   THE  PRRCIEUSES 

in  his  speech  and  the  thickness  of 
his  voice.  '  Besides  this  he  spat  at 
least  six  times  in  reciting  one  stanza 
of  four  lines.  This  is  why  the  Cav- 
alier Marini  said  that  he  had  never 
seen  a  man  so  wet  nor  a  poet  so 
dry.' 

Tallemant  gives  a  handful  of  such 
anecdotes  which  help  us  to  conceive 
the  brusque  old  poet  as  vividly  as  if 
he  had  been  provided  with  a  Boswell. 
It  was  a  part  of  Malherbe's  mission 
to  castigate  bad  versifiers,  or  at  least 
versifiers  whom  he  considered  bad. 
He  went  to  dine  with  Desportes,  who 
received  him  graciously  and  offered 
to  give  him  a  version  of  the  Psalms 
which  he  had  just  printed.  '  Do  not 
trouble,'  said  Malherbe,  '  I  have  seen 
them;  your  soup  is  worth  more  than 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

your  Psalms.'  The  dinner  is  said  to 
have  been  eaten  in  silence. 

He  expressed  his  opinion  of  human 
nature  in  his  characteristic  comment 
on  the  death  of  Abel.  '  Was  n't  that 
a  fine  debut !  There  were  only  three 
or  four  human  beings  in  the  world, 
and  they  began  to  kill  one  another; 
after  that,  what  was  God  able  to  hope 
from  mankind  that  He  should  take 
the  trouble  to  preserve  them  ■?  ' 

Malherbe's  services  to  French  liter- 
ature were  on  the  side  of  restraint, 
finish,  nobility  of  form,  perfection  in 
handling  the  materials  of  poetry.  He 
was  late  in  beginning,  and  he  worked 
with  such  deliberation  that  he  left  but 
a  slender  volume  of  verse.  His  in- 
fluence was  wide-reaching  in  his  own 
day,  and  in  this  happy  age  of  crum- 
-^46  -t- 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

bling  idols  he  is  secure  in  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  seventeenth  century  classic. 
Even  the  gibes  of  an  Arsene  Hous- 
saye  cannot  affect  him  much.  As  an 
illustration  of  his  willingness  to  let  a 
poem  bide  its  time  and  slowly  grow 
into  perfection  they  cite  his  verses  ad- 
dressed to  the  first  president  of  Ver- 
dun. Malherbe  wished  to  console  this 
gentleman  for  the  death  of  his  wife. 
'  By  the  time  the  stanzas  were  finished 
the  gentleman  had  been  consoled,  re- 
married, and  was  himself  ^d-^^.' 

In  his  ill-kept  and  badly  furnished 
apartments  Malherbe  presided  over  a 
literary  circle  composed  of  younger 
poets  who  recognized  him  as  the 
master.  The  best  known  of  these 
pupils  was  Racan,  author  of  the  Ber- 
geries,  a  more  absent-minded   gentle- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

man  than  Parson  Adams,  if  the  stories 
told  of  him  be  not  exaggerations. 

He  was  'caught  young'  by  Mal- 
herbe,  who  ruled  him  as  an  old-time 
pedagogue  might  have  done,  even 
forbidding  his  pupil  to  marry,  and 
criticising  his  verse  with  caustic  sever- 
ity. Malherbe  kept  Racan  humble  by 
telling  him  that  a  poet  was  of  no  more 
use  to  his  country  than  a  skittles-player, 
and  that  if  their  own  verses  lived  after 
them  they  would  be  praised  as  men 
who  had  been  rather  clever  in  arran- 
ging words  in  a  certain  order,  but  who 
were  on  the  whole  fools  to  spend  their 
time  that  way. 

Balzac  is  usually  disposed  of  by 
calling  him  the  Malherbe  of  prose,  — 
a  facile  kind  of  criticism  made  familiar 
to  us   in   those  attempts  to   explain 

-H  48  -1— 


JND   THE  PR£CIEUSES 

George  Meredith  by  speaking  of  him 
as  a  prose  Browning,  He  was  a  rhe- 
torician, this  Jean-Louis  Guez  de 
Balzac,  who  employed  the  epistolary 
form  as  best  suited  to  his  Hterary 
needs.  James  Howell  read  Balzac's 
letters,  and  finding  them  little  to  his 
taste,  said  so  in  terms  which  it  will 
be  proper  not  to  repeat.  We  need  to 
read  but  one  of  Balzac's  grandiose 
epistles  and  follow  it  with  a  '  familiar 
letter '  of  James  Howell  to  understand 
how  antipathetic  the  Englishman  and 
the  Frenchman  were,  and  that  for  rea- 
sons with  which  racial  antagonism  had 
nothing  to  do.  The  letters  of  Balzac 
are  the  opposite  of  familiar.  They 
contain  none  of  the  element  which 
gives  charm  to  what  in  this  day  are 
called  letters.  With  us  a  letter  is 
—I-  49  -t— 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

something  natural,  chatty,  unostenta- 
tious. The  sentences  are  short,  the 
language  colloquial.  One  speaks  of 
the  sorrow  of  breaking  in  a  new  cook 
or  a  new  pair  of  shoes.  Domestic 
adventures  are  not  tabooed,  nor  does 
the  writer  disdain  to  give  the  thrilling 
history  of  the  last  church  social.  In 
short,  when  we  speak  of  a  letter  we 
mean  the  most  informal  type  of  liter- 
ary composition,  a  thing  written  with 
such  careless  good  nature  that  we  are 
confused  at  the  thought  of  having  it 
seen  by  any  other  eye  than  that  for 
which  it  was  originally  intended. 

When,  however,  Balzac  wrote  let- 
ters he  wished  them  to  be  seen  of  men. 
The  letters  might  be  addressed  to  a 
great  lord  or  a  powerful  churchman, 
but  they  were  meant  to  be  read  by 
-1-  50  -t- 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

who  could  appreciate  them,  and  most 
of  all  by  posterity.  For  a  time  Bal- 
zac's vogue  was  extraordinary.  He 
was  spoken  of  not  merely  as  the  most 
eloquent  man  in  France,  such  praise 
was  too  reserved  and  judicial :  he  was 
the  only  eloquent  man  in  France. 
When  he  was  but  twenty-four  years 
of  age  Perron  said  of  him  to  CoefFe- 
teau :  '  If  he  goes  on  as  he  has  begun, 
he  will  be  the  master  of  masters.' 
They  were  speaking  of  his  literary 
style. 

It  is  well  to  be  suspicious  of  a  sev- 
enteenth century  Frenchman  when 
he  comes  bearing  compliments.  Two 
men  of  letters  might  be  depended 
upon  to  exchange  verbal  caresses 
whatever  they  privately  thought  one 
of  the  other.  Nevertheless  there 
-(-  51  -»- 


<.  rrriHf^^ 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

must  have  been  a  measure  of  sincerity 
among  them.  This  extract  from  one 
of  Voiture's  letters  shows  how  it  was 
customary  to  address  Balzac.  The 
illustration  is  all  the  better  for  coming 
from  Voiture,  who  used  to  spice  his 
compliments  with  minute  touches  of 
malice  and  irony.  '  To-day  all  men 
listen  to  you.  No  one  who  under- 
stands how  to  read  is  indifferent. 
They  who  are  jealous  for  the  honor  of 
this  kingdom  take  no  more  pains  to 
learn  what  Monsieur  the  Marshal  de 
Crequy  is  doing  than  to  learn  what 
you  are  doing.  And  we  have  more 
than  two  generals  in  the  army  who  do 
not  make  so  great  a  sensation  with 
thirty  thousand  men  as  do  you  in  your 
solitude.' 

Voiture  reached  the  superlative  of 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

panegyric  with  perfect  ease,  like  the 
accompHshed  man  of  the  world  that 
he  was.  There  was  nothing  to  say 
more  emphatic  than  this:  Balzac  was 
more  in  the  public  eye  than  two  gen- 
erals each  with  thirty  thousand  men. 

In  the  pretty  little  edition  of  Les 
CEuvres  diverses  du  Sieur  de  Balzac 
published  at  Leyden  by  Jean  Elzevier 
in  1658  will  be  found  four  '  discourses,' 
inscribed  to  the  Marquise  de  Ram- 
bouillet.  They  comprise  about  sixty 
pages,  and  are  in  part  the  outcome  of 
conversations  which  may  have  taken 
place  in  the  'blue  room.'  One  is'l 
on  the  Roman  Character,  another  is 
the  continuation  of  a  talk  on  Conver- 
sation among  the  Romans,  the  third  is 
on  Mecenas,  the  fourth  on  Glory. 
Upon  the   testimony  of  these  letters  ', 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

Roederer  bases  his  argument  for  the 
high  intellectual  tone  of  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet.  The  Marquise  was 
genuinely  interested  in  these  themes. 
The  woman  who  could  call  out  such 
discourses  from  the  '  grand  epistolier 
de  France '  was  neither  a  pedant  nor 
a  precieuse.  For  the  discourses  do 
not  contain  enough  of  the  pedantic  to 
satisfy  a  blue-stocking,  nor  enough  of 
affectation  to  amuse  a  precieuse.  And 
it  would  be  attributing  an  excess  of 
vanity  to  Balzac  to  suppose  that  in 
writing  to  the  Marquise  he  had  no 
disinterested  motive, — that  bethought 
chiefly  of  the  admiring  comment  which 
would  be  called  out  by  the  reading 
of  his  highly  finished  essays  in  that 
part  of  the  great  world  whose  praise 
was  best  worth  having. 


III 


,E  are  warned  not  to  think  of 
this  great  house  as  a  sort  of  Academy, 
a  mere  club  of  pedants  and  blue- 
stockings. It  was  not  that.  It  was 
emphatically  the  gay  world,  life,  so- 
ciety. Everything  was  there  which 
the  world  enjoys,  with  perhaps  a  touch 
of  ceremonial  reserve  hitherto  un- 
known. There  might  be  grave  argu- 
ments over  the  use  of  prepositions,  or 
the  propriety  of  admitting  a  new  word 
to  the  French  language,  but  there  was 


^  — <^^=^ 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

also  music  and  dancing.  In  a  house 
filled  with  young  people,  pleasure  will 
be  the  order  of  many  days.  The 
party  for  pleasure  at  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet  was  organized  and  headed  by 
Vincent  Voiture. 

Voiture  was  what  the  French  call, 
with  untranslatable  felicity,  un  bel 
esprit;  in  England  they  would  say 
a  wit.  His  career  shows  how  demo- 
cratic Hotel  de  Rambouillet  was,  and 
how  entirely  amiable  qualities  atoned 
for  the  lack  of  a  grandfather.  Voi- 
ture was  of  humble  birth,  the  son  of  a 
wine-merchant  of  Amiens,  but  his 
gifts  carried  him  to  a  foremost  place 
in  the  most  cultivated  society  of  his 
day.  Men  of  highest  rank  treated 
him  as  an  equal.  He  had  abundance 
of  animal  spirits,  and  he  also  had  tact, 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

suppleness  of  intellect,  humor,  a  know- 
ledge of  men  and  women.  People 
admired  his  cleverness  and  marveled 
at  his  audacity.  The  Due  d'Enghien 
once  said :  '  If  Voiture  were  of  our 
rank  he  would  be  unendurable.' 
When  he  grew  old  Voiture  became 
peevish,  and  was  tolerated  just  as  if 
he  had  been  a  lord  or  a  rich  uncle. 

Cousin  praises  Voiture  because  he 
was  '  the  first  example  of  a  man  of 
letters  who  lived  among  the  great 
and  still  maintained  his  independence.' 
The  praise  would  be  justly  bestowed 
if  it  were  true  that  Voiture  took  the 
attitude  of  a  professed  man  of  letters. 
He  did  not.  He  trifled  at  literature. 
But  he  trifled  with  exceeding  care,  and 
his  works  live  after  him.  He  wrote 
letters  and  poems.      He  printed  no- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

thing  during  his  lifetime.  When,  after 
his  death,  these  writings  were  collected 
and  published  in  two  volumes,  people 
laughed  at  the  title  which  the  literary- 
executor  gave  to  them  —  the  Works 
of  Vincent  Voiture.  But  every  histo- 
rian of  French  literature  takes  them 
into  account.  Cousin  gives  Voiture 
the  credit  of  being  inventor  of  what 
we  would  now  call  vers  de  societe. 
This  poet  would  live  if  only  by  virtue 
of  his  connection  with  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet.  Honors  are  still  done  him. 
Andrew  Lang  translates  him,  and  Ger- 
man Gelehrte  write  theses  on  his 
syntax. 

In  the  Grand  Dictionnaire  des  Pre- 
cieuses  Voiture  figures  under  the  name 
of  Valere,  that  is,  Valerius.  His  in- 
fluence among  the  little  salons  was  so 


^^^"  o> 


JND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

great  that  if  he  showed  himself  once 
at  a  lady's  house  her  reputation  as  a 
precieuse  was  made. 

At  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  he  ex- 
erted to  the  utmost  his  extraordinary- 
powers  of  entertainment.  He  ex- 
celled in  that  which  we  vaguely  and 
helplessly  describe  as  the  art  of  keep- 
ing things  going.  A  house  which 
was  at  no  time  a  solemn  place  was  far- 
ther than  ever  from  solemnity  when 
he  was  present.  Moreover  we  are  in 
France,  and  France  is  gay,  and  the 
French  are  a  gay  people.  We  are 
to  take  for  granted  all  those  things  in 
which  youth  delights,  the  fetes,  the 
fancy-dress  balls,  the  collations,  the 
picnics.  They  loved  to  travesty  my- 
thological scenes  in  the  ample  Pare 
Rambouillet;  this  was   their  way  of 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

presenting  Gibson  tableaux.  Half 
the  charm  of  their  comedies  and  fetes 
grew  out  of  the  improvised  character 
of  these  things.  That  genius  of  the 
Latin  race  for  doing  the  right  thing  at 
exactly  the  right  time  came  into  play. 
What  our  cold  Anglo-Saxon  tempera- 
ment would  spoil  was  infinitely  light 
and  graceful  under  their  touch. 

Voiture  also  had  a  taste  for  the 
kind  of  joke  called  practical.  For 
this  he  has  been  reproved.  Bourciez 
calls  him  the  enfant  terrible  of  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet.  One  illustration  of 
his  mischievous  wit  is  given  in  all  the 
books.  He  encountered  on  the  street 
a  wandering  animal-trainer  with  two 
dancing  bears.  He  brought  all  three 
up  stair  and  through  corridor  into  the 
room  where,  on  the  other  side  of  a 
-••  60  •»- 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

large  screen,  the  Marquise  and  a  group 
of  her  friends  were  sitting.  One  can 
guess  the  consternation  of  this  lady 
when,  on  hearing  a  scuffling  behind 
her,  she  looked  around  and  saw  four 
hairy  paws  resting  on  the  top  of  the 
screen  with  muzzles  laid  between  them 
and  bearish  eyes  blinking  down  upon 
her. 

Was  it  in  punishment  for  this  jest 
that  the  Marquise  persuaded  Voiture 
that  he  was  almost  losing  his  mind, 
or  at  least  becoming  an  unconscious 
plagiarist?  He  used,  after  the  ap- 
proved custom  of  the  day,  to  hand  his 
verses  about  in  manuscript.  The 
Marquise  had  one  of  his  newest  poems 
printed  and  the  leaf  bound  into 
a  volume.  Then  she  called  his  at- 
tention to   the   extraordinary   resem- 

-4-  6i  -*- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

blance  between  the  two  poems.  For 
the  moment  Voiture  was  staggered, 
and  fully  believed  that  at  the  time  he 
was,  as  he  supposed,  writing  original 
verse,  he  must  have  been  remember- 
ing something  he  had  read. 

Another  personage  at  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet  was  the  Due  de  Montau- 
sier.  He  played  as  prominent  a 
role  as  Voiture,  but  was  so  utterly  un- 
like the  little  poet  that  the  two  men 
form  a  piquant  contrast. 

Montausier  made  his  first  appear- 
ance at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  in  1631. 
He  was  then  Marquis  de  Salle,  and 
barely  twenty-two  years  of  age.  He 
became  enamored  of  Julie,  and  later 
an  aspirant  for  her  hand.  If  it  were 
ever  true  that  a  young  lady  accepted 
a  suitor  because  all  the  world  spoke 
-1-62-1— 


k 


(5  ""T^j?^  -^ 

AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

well  of  him,  Montausier  would  have 
made  easy  conquest,  for  he  was  a  man 
whom  no  one  named  unless  to  praise. 
This  is  a  little  surprising  since  his 
virtues  were  of  a  rugged  and  militant 
sort.  The  tradition  is  significant 
which  says  that  Moliere  drew  from 
Montausier  some  of  the  finest  traits 
in  the  character  of  the  Misanthrope. 

Most  men  who  pay  court  to  wo- 
men expect  their  reward  within  a 
reasonable  time.  This  particular 
courtship  was  protracted  to  thirteen 
years.  It  is  accounted  a  phenomenal 
case  in  the  annals  of  love-making. 
We  are  not,  however,  to  suppose 
that  Montausier  spent  thirteen  years 
at  the  lady's  feet,  breathing  amorous 
sighs,  and  writing  sonnets  to  her 
beauty.  Some  gallants  made  love  in 
-t-63-f- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

this  feeble  fashion,  imitating  Celadon 
in  the  Astree.  Montausier  was  of 
more  heroic  build.  He  was  a  soldier. 
His  courting  was  '  punctuated '  with 
battles,  wounds,  and  imprisonments. 
But  he  returned  from  the  wars  with 
but  one  thought  —  to  win  the  hand 
of  Julie  d'Angennes,  The  situation 
became  intense.  Everybody  wondered 
how  it  was  going  to  turn  out.  The 
lover  was  worthy  of  his  mistress,  but 
she  wished  not  to  marry.  'He  laid 
siege  to  the  fortress  of  her  affections 
strictly  in  accordance  with  the  rules.' 
All  the  world,  as  the  French  say,  be- 
came absorbed  in  this  interesting 
drama.  The  most  intimate  friends  of 
the  Marquise  took  it  upon  themselves 
to  speak  in  Montausier's  behalf  Even 
the  great  Richelieu  brought  his  in- 
-h  64  •»- 


<»  ■'^;^ 


JND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

fluence  to  bear.  The  courtship  was 
so  long  drawn  out  that  there  was  time 
for  the  aspect  of  French  pohtics  to 
change,  and  a  new  minister  to  come 
into  power ;  Mazarin  was  no  less  sym- 
pathetic than  his  illustrious  predeces- 
sor. Even  the  Queen  spoke  for  Mon- 
tausier.  The  young  man  himself 
took  one  step  which  meant  a  good 
deal  in  those  days;  he  changed  his 
religion.  The  house  of  d'Angennes 
was  Catholic ;  Montausier  was  a  Cal- 
vinist.  He  embraced  the  old  faith, 
and  observed  that  it  made  little  differ- 
ence by  which  route  one  went  to 
Heaven. 

Montausier,    as    I    have    said,   was 
twenty-two   years   old  when   he  first 
saw  Julie  d'Angennes.    He  was  thirty- 
five  when  the  marriage   took    place. 
-I-  65  -t- 


«: 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

This  was  in   1645.     The    bride  was 
three  years  older  dian  her  husband. 

In  1641  Montausier  comphmented 
the  lady  of  his  affections  with  that 
graceful  gift  known  as  the  Guirlande 
de  Julie.  It  was  a  beautiful  folio 
volume,  the  leaves  of  vellum,  the 
binding  of  red  morocco  doublee  by 
Le  Gascon,  and  bearing  the  mono- 
gram J-L,  for  Julie-Lucine,  both  on 
the  outside  and  inside  of  the  cover. 
The  frontispiece  was  a  'zephyr'  hold- 
ing in  one  hand  a  rose  and  in  the  other 
a  garland  of  twenty-nine  flowers.  On 
the  succeeding  leaves  of  the  volume 
each  flower  was  painted  separately  by 
Robert,  and  beneath  were  madrigals 
inscribed  in  the  hand  of  the  famous 
calligraphist,  Nicholas  Jarry.  The 
madrigals  were  sixty-two  in  number. 
^-  66  -)— 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

Nineteen  poets  contributed,  among 
them  Chapelain,  Gombauld,  Scudery, 
Racan,  and  Conrart.  Sixteen  of  the 
threescore  poems  are  by  Montausier 
himself.  Voiture  alone  of  those  whom 
we  should  expect  to  find  represented 
was  not  of  the  number.  Did  the  en- 
fant terrible  of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
actually  '  pout '  and  refuse  to  play, 
as  Bourciez  hints  *?  In  1 855  Cousin 
was  able  to  thank  God  in  a  manner 
truly  French  that  the  Guirlande  de 
Julie  was  still  in  existence,  a  carefully 
guarded  treasure  in  one  of  the  noble 
houses  of  France.  It  has  been  upon 
the  market  at  least  once,  and  then 
brought  the  considerable  sum  of  three 
thousand  dollars.  That  was  a  hun- 
dred years  ago.  One  hardly  dares  to 
think   to  what   towering   height   the 

^-  67  H- 


<1  ■*^g^-  =0. 

HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

virtuosi  and  bibliophiles  of  to-day 
might  run  the  price  if  the  Garland 
were  to  be  brought  to  the  block. 

Historians  date  the  decline  of  Ho- 
tel de  Rambouillet  from  Julie's  mar- 
riage. She  represented  the  younger 
life  of  the  stately  house.  If  the  Mar- 
quise herself  could  not  be  called  old 
in  1645,  she  was  at  least  of  middle 
age ;  she  had  passed  her  fifty-seventh 
birthday.  For  thirty-five  years  she 
had  presided  over  a  circle  whose  name 
is  to  this  day  the  synonym  for  refine- 
ment and  culture.  During  that  time 
other  women  had  learned,  partly  from 
her,  the  art  of  conducting  a  salon. 
Many  of  these  women  were  gifted 
and  of  high  social  standing.  They 
were  able  to  preside  with  grace  and 
intelligence.  Many  of  them  were  of 
-t-68H- 


AND   THE  PR£  CI  BUSES 

little  culture  and  possessed  only  of 
the  imitative  faculty.  The  best  they 
could  do  was  to  travesty  what  they 
had  seen  or  heard  in  the  '  blue  room,' 
or  still  worse  to  travesty  what  they 
had  not  known  by  experience  but 
only  heard  about.  Between  1 645  and  | 
1648  a  new  word  'precieuse'  began 
to  pass  from  lip  to  lip.  Without 
attempting  to  give  an  accurate  defi- 
nition to  it  the  public  adopted  it. 
They  to  whom  the  word  was  applied 
accepted  it  with  complacency ;  they 
who  applied  it  to  others  did  so  with 
an  accent  which  might  mean  anything 
from  admiration  to  contempt. 


69 


IV 


,HO  were  the  Precieuses  ?  We 
are  usually  taught  to  believe  that  all 
the  habitual  frequenters  of  the  '  blue 
room '  are  to  be  so  accounted.  But 
Rcederer,  the  first  historian  to  have 
definite  ideas  on  the  subject,  and  the 
historian  who  has  succeeded  in  im- 
posing his  ideas  on  all  other  writ- 
ers, says  not  so.  As  I  understand 
him,  Preciosity  may  have  cradled  in 
the  '  blue  room,'  and  the  Marquise  de 
Rambouillet  will  always  be  reputed 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

its  mother;  but  she  is  not  to  be  held 
responsible  for  the  later  vagaries  of 
her  offspring. 

Take  the  so-called  English  aes- 
thetic movement  of  a  few  years  since. 
Ruskin  was  in  a  way  responsible  for 
the  whole  affair,  sun-flowers,  knee- 
breeches,  clinging  garments,  the  opera 
of  Patience^  all  of  it.  That  is  to 
say,  he  was  as  much  responsible  for  it 
as  the  Marquise  de  Rambouillet  was 
responsible  for  the  antics  of  the  pre- 
cieuses.  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  had 
its  affectations,  but  the  extravagances 
which  called  out  the  satire  of  Moliere 
were  devised  by  the  precieuses  for 
their  own  peculiar  enjoyment.  Even^ 
at  the  time  when  Marini,  the  Nea- 
politan poet,  was  her  honored  guest, 
he  who  is  thought  to  represent  verbal 
-»•  72+- 


0  rr^n^!^^ 'j 

AND   THE  PRRCIEUSES 

affectation  carried  to  its  extreme,  the 
Marquise  remained  faithful  to  Mal- 
herbe.  The  poet  of  law  and  order 
was  her  poet.  . 

Every  good  and  useful  thing  has  its 
parody.  There  is  not  a  patent  medi- 
cine of  reputed  worth  which  does  not 
bear  upon  its  label  the  warning,  '  Be- 
ware of  imitations.' 

The  salons  which  came  into  exist- 
ence just  before  and  during  the  de- 
cline of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  were 
modeled  more  or  less  imperfectly 
upon  it.  No  woman  had  the  social 
gifts  of  the  Marquise,  no  woman  could 
hope  to  bring  together  such  a  number 
of  shining  lights.  They  did  what 
they  could.  Some  did  well  and  some 
did  very  ill.  In  almost  every  case 
there  was  lack   of  a   wholesome   re- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

straining  force.  It  was  hardly  pos- 
sible to  play  the  fool  before  the  stately 
Marquise  and  her  daughters,  before 
real  wits  and  real  poets;  but  there 
was  no  end  to  the  airs  these  women 
put  on  when  they  set  up,  each  for 
herself,  a  petty  literary  court. 
'''Four  or  five  of  these  salons  deserve 
only  courteous  mention.  Such  were 
Hotel  d'Albret  and  Hotel  de  Riche- 
lieu, which  continued  the  aristocratic 
traditions  of  the  '  blue  room.'  Hotel 
d'Albret  was  a  princely  mansion  where 
one  met  the  best  of  society,  attracted 
there  by  the  hospitality  of  the  marshal, 
his  high  position,  and  his  genuine 
love  of  conversation  and  letters. 
Monsieur  and  Madame  de  Richelieu 
had  about  the  same  guests  that  one 
found  at  Hotel  d'Albret ;  for  example. 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

Madame  de  Scarron  was  often  to  be 
seen  at  these  houses.  They  were 
spoken  of  as  copies,  and  in  a  way 
continuations,  of  Hotel  de  Rambou- 
illet.  But  they  lacked  a  Voiture,  by 
whose  vivacity  and  wit  their  reputa- 
tion might  be  carried  down  to  pos- 
terity.^ 

Other  circles  of  distinction  were 
those  of  Mademoiselle  de  Montpen- 
sier,  the  daughter  ofGaston,  Due  d'Or- 
leans,  the  lady  general  of  the  Fronde, 
now  living  in  splendid  '  disgrace '  at 
the  Luxembourg ;  of  Madame  de 
Longueville,  Madame  de  Sable,  and 
Madame  de  La  Fayette.  The  world 
is   indebted    to  two  of  these  women 

^  Roederer  :  Memoir e  sur  la  Societe  polie,  chap, 
xiii. 


fa  — ■'^"'  ^ 

HOTEL  DE  RAMBOVILLET 

for  their  share  in  the  Maxims  of 
La  Rochefoucauld.  The  Marquise 
de  Sable  wrote  maxims.  So  did  the 
members  of  her  circle.  At  this  house, 
whose  attractions  were  sufficient  to 
bring  Arnauld  and  Pascal,  the  con- 
versation turned  on  high  and  serious 
themes,  metaphysics,  theology,  physi- 
cal science,  grammar.  How  vital  the 
question  of  correct  speech  was  held  to 
be  we  know  from  a  little  book  on  the 
art  of  translation  written  by  the  gen- 
tleman who  called  himself  Sieur  de 
Lestang,  and  dedicated  to  Madame 
de  Sable.  '  I  know,'  he  says, '  that  the 
masters  of  our  language  consult  you 
in  their  doubts,  make  you  the  arbi- 
tress  of  their  differences,  and  submit 
to  your  decisions.  In  truth  you  are 
the  person  who  best  knows  all  the 
— »•  76  •»- 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

laws  and  rules  of  discourse,  who  best 
knows  how  to  utter  sentiments  and 
ideas  with  grace  and  clarity,  who 
best  knows  how  to  employ  those 
happy  forms  of  expression  at  once 
ingenious,  charming,  and  characteris- 
tically French.  In  short,  you  are  the 
one  who  best  knows  all  those  myster- 
ies and  delicacies  of  style  of  which 
Monsieur  de  Vaugelas  speaks.' 

The  Maxims  of  La  Rochefoucauld 
as  they  appeared  in  their  earliest  form 
represent  the  genius  of  their  author 
plus  the  influence  of  Madame  de 
Sable,  In  their  later  and  less  cynical 
form  is  to  be  perceived  a  measure  of 
the  humanizing  and  generous  influ- 
ence of  Madame  de  La  Fayette.  One  / 
may  not  speak  lightly  of  the  tastes, 
manners,  or  occupations  of  any  one 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

of  these  '  ruelles  of  the  second  order.' 
There  must  have  been  much  that  was 
admirable  in  the  Hfe  there,  since  it 
compelled  the  admiration  of  Huet, 
La  Fontaine,  La  Rochefoucauld,  and 
Madame  de  Sevigne. 

The  most  spectacular  of  these 
lesser  coteries  was  that  of  Madeleine 
de  Scudery,  Brunetiere  is  sneering  in 
his  tone  when  he  speaks  of  this  lady : 
'  Cette  pauvre  Sapho,'  he  says.  She 
had  many  admirable  qualities,  though 
it  seems  extravagant  to  call  her,  as 
M.  Barthelemy  does,  '  the  most  re- 
markable figure  of  the  seventeenth 
century.'  She  composed  romances  of 
a  length  unknown  to  the  feeble  read- 
ers of  our  day.  Every  story  was  in 
ten  volumes  when  it  was  not  in  more ; 
and  every  volume  was  a  quarto.     At 


JND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

first  glance  one  would  incline  to  say 
that  a  single  romance  by  Madelein^ 
de  Scudery  contained  almost  as  much 
'  reading  matter '  as  all  the  Waverley 
novels  taken  together.  She  was  the 
most  pitiless  writer  of  fiction  that  the 
world  has  ever  known.  Even  M. 
Barthelemy  admits  that  her  romances 
seem  long  and  monotonous  to  us.      ^ 

It  is  beyond  belief  that  her  books 
were  ever  read  —  at  least  that  they 
were  ever  read  through.  The  fasci- 
nation they  exercised  was  in  part  due 
to  the  fact  that  under  classical  names 
were  to  be  recognized  notable  con- 
temporaries. People  read  the  Grand 
Cyrus  m.  order  to  see  themselves  as 
Madeleine  de  Scudery  saw  them. 
The  manners,  events,  ideas  were  of 
their  own  day,  and  not  of  some  vague 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

past  as  they  pretended  to  be.  The 
characters  have  been  identified.  Vic- 
tor Cousin  devoted  two  volumes 
comprising  nearly  a  thousand  pages 
to  an  interpretation  of  French  society 
in  the  seventeenth  century  according 
to  the  Grand  Cyrus.  Mandane  is 
the  Duchesse  de  Longueville;  Cyrus 
is  the  great  Conde ;  Cieomire  is  the 
Marquise  de  Rambouillet ;  Angelique 
Paulet  is  Elise ;  and  so  on. 

The  romance  of  Clelie  has  for 
frontispiece  a  remarkable  map  designed 
by  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery  to  illus- 
trate the  progress  of  the  'great  pas- 
sion.' It  is  a  map  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Tenderness.  Here  are  pleasant 
valleys,  hills  and  plains,  villages  and 
cities.  There  is  a  well-defined  road 
which  lovers  may  travel.  They 
-I-  80  4- 


AND   THE  PRECIEUSES 

wander  along  the  shore  of  the  Lake! 
of  Indifference  and  presently  come  to 
the  town  of  Respect.  Then  they 
pass  through  a  number  of  villages 
such  as  Love-letter,  Letter-gallant, 
Pretty-verses,  Complaisance,  Submis- 
sion, Little  Attentions,  Assiduity, 
Eagerness,  Sensibility.  In  this  way 
one  fell  in  love  according  to  Made- 
moiselle de  Scudery.  On  her  map 
there  was  also  a  perfidious  river  called 
Inclination,  perfidious  because  it  led 
to  the  Ocean  Dangerous.  All  this  sen- 
timental rubbish  was  highly  esteemed 
in  the  year  1656,  not  alone  by  the 
precieuses,  but  by  people  of  taste  and 
judgment  as  well;  and  a  grave  and 
learned  body  of  men,  the  French 
Academy,  bestowed  on  '  La  Scuderi ' 
the  Balzac  prize  of  Eloquence.  —* 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

In  Alfred  de  Vigny's  historical  ro- 
mance of  Cinq-Mars  is  a  scene  at  the 
house  of  Marion  de  Lor  me  where  are 
gathered  together  among  numerous 
gallants  and  fine  gentlemen  certain 
men  of  letters,  Corneille,  young  Moli- 
ere,  Georges  de  Scudery,  the  brother 
of  Madeleine,  also  Descartes,  two  or 
three  members  of  the  Academy,  and, 
of  all  men,  John  Milton  I  Georges  de 
Scudery  has  a  map  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Tenderness  which  he  explains  to 
an  admiring  group.  Young  Poque- 
lin  professes  not  to  find  the  wit  of  the 
'  carte  de  Tendre '  very  interesting,  is 
snubbed  into  silence,  and  consoles 
himself  by  meditating  the  Precieuses 
ridicules.  Later  in  the  evening  Mil- 
ton recites  from  Paradise  Lost  to  the 
satisfaction   of  a  few  of  his  auditors 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

and  to  the  dismay  of  the  majority. 
The  scene  is  not  entirely  convincing. 
There  are  too  many  distinguished 
men  on  the  stage  at  the  same  time. 
The  effect  is  exaggerated  and  theat- 
rical. Undoubtedly  the  episode  is 
best  judged  from  a  point  of  view  quite 
other  than  that  which  an  Englishman 
or  an  American  would  naturally  take. 
Alfred  de  Vigny's  motive  is  none  the 
less  suggestive  ;  he  wishes  to  contrast 
the  product  of  the  salons  and  coteries 
with  that  greater  literature  which  is 
independent  of  fashion  and  unaffected 
by  the  caprices  of  society. 

When  a  woman  is  plain  she  may 
be  praised  for  some  virtue  which  is 
superior  to  good  looks.  The  critic 
who  described  Madeleine  de  Scudery 
as  a  '  homely  old  maid  '  was  generous 


HOTEL  BE  RAMBOUILLET 

enough  to  add  that  she  was  '  good.' 
She  was  a  very  amiable  woman  and 
had  been  cordially  received  at  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet.  That  she  got  many 
of  her  ideas  there  is  indisputable ;  it 
is  not  so  easy  to  believe,  as  some 
writers  would  have  us  believe,  that 
she  represented  the  pure  tradition  of 
the  '  blue  room  '  of  Arthenice. 

She  began  to  hold  her  famous 
'Saturdays'  some  time  between  1645 
and  1650.  Her  house  became  the 
'  normal  school '  of  precieuses  of  the 
thorough-going  sort.  Wherein  it  dif- 
fered from  that  more  splendid  school 
of  manners  at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
is  clearly  explained  by  Cousin.  At 
the  older  hou5.e-ihe-circk-was  largely 
aristocratic,  distinguished  by  fine  blood 
as  well    as  by  fine  breeding.     If  the 

— H  84  -f— 


AND   THE  PR^  CI  BUSES 

conversation  was  of  literature,  that  did 
not  preclude  other  themes.  '  They/ 
talked  of  everything,  of  war,  of  reli- 
gion, of  politics.'  The  influence  which 
emanated  from  this  society  was  far- 
reaching  because  the  matters  there  dis- 
cussed were  of  varied  interest,  not  con- 
fined to  belles-lettres.  On  the  other 
hand  the  '  Saturdays '  were  out  and  out 
literary,  and  therefore  apt  to  be  afflicted 
with  that  malaise  which  is  always 
apparent  if  a  number  of  people  with 
'  literary  leanings  '  get  together.  The^| 
salon  of  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery ' 
had  its  better  and  its  worse  state,  to 
be  sure,  but  the  general  tendency 
was  in  the  direction  of  preciosity 
pure  and  simple.  Moreover  the  so- 
ciety was  mixed.  A  few  members  of 
the   elite   came   from   time    to   time, 

— h  85  -t— 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

but  the  '  Saturdays '  as  a  whole  lacked 
distinction. 

Cousin  makes  this  comparison.  At 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet  men  and  wo- 
men sought  to  express  noble  things 
in  a  simple  manner ;  at  the  '  Satur- 
days '  they  seemed  to  be  trying  to  utter 
unimportant  things  in  a  manner  both 
strained  and  pretentious. 


86 


V 


JLHE  small  salons  increased  in 
number.  The  frequenters  thereof 
multiplied.  The  new  word  '  precieuse ' 
began  to  be  used  in  a  restricted  sense. 
The  word  was  not  so  used  until  about 
thirteen  years  after  the  great  period  of 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet. 

How  marked  the  contrast  was  be- 
tween the  older  house  and  the  new 
salons  becomes  clear  when  we  note 
the  themes  of  conversation  among  the 
precieuses.      For  example,  they   dis- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 


r 


cussed  the  great  question  whether 
history  should  be  preferred  to  romance, 

'  or  romance  to  history.  Being  new 
women,  they  were  agitated  over  the 
question  how  much  Hberty  it  was 
woman's  right  to  enjoy.  Some  took 
the  ground  that  if  husbands  were  sus- 
picious, then  it  was  the  privilege  of 
wives  to  give  them  a  reason  for  sus- 

^picion.  One  may  guess  accurately 
how  such  a  topic  would  have  been 
received  at  Hotel  de  Rambouillet ! 
They  mingled  all  kinds  of  diverse  in- 
terests in  a  manner  truly  grotesque. 
They  prepared  a  manual  of  conversa- 
tion. They  dressed  dolls  with  a  view 
to  studying  the  effect  of  the  new 
fashions  which  they  proposed  to  in- 
troduce.    They  conversed  in  a  manner 

I  so  alambiquee  that  it  ended  like  the 

I ^-  88  -<- 


AND   THE  PRi  CI  BUSES 


-n 


meeting  of  a  Browning  society  —  no  i 
one  of  them  could  understand  the 
others.  They  made  impromptus  and 
madrigals.  In  short,  they  did  all 
sorts  of  things,  no  one  of  which  would 
they  have  dared  to  do  at  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet.  Yet  in  many  instances 
they  seemed  to  have  learned  their  les- 
son of  the  older  house.  But  the  dig- 
nity, the  ceremonial  repression  which 
the  Marquise  herself  exercised  together 
with  her  own  personal  sweetness  and 
good  sense  —  all  these  elements  were 
lacking. 

They  annexed,  though  they  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  conquered,  the 
entire  kingdom  of  knowledge.  Some 
were  philosophical.  A  precieuse  who 
had  lost  a  friend  by  death  gave  a  dis- 
quisition on  grief    She  maintained  the        \ 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

interesting  thesis  that  the  chief  purpose 
of  grief  is  to  help  one  to  hve  over  again 
all  the  pleasure  one  has  enjoyed  with 
the  lost  friend.  Others  took  the 
homely  position  that  the  object  of 
grief  is  to  make  one  miserable.  Ma- 
demoiselle Dupre,  an  acquaintance  of 
Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  became 
passionately  addicted  to  the  philosophy 
of  Descartes.  She  interpreted  it  to 
her  friends,  though  it  is  quite  possible 
that  her  interpretation  of  Cartesianism 
belongs  in  the  same  category  with 
Mrs.  Montague's  'defense'  of  Shake- 
speare. Her  ambitions  were  duly  re- 
cognized, however,  and  in  her  par- 
ticular circle  she  was  called  'La 
Cartesienne.' 

Some  of  the  precieuses  were  enthu- 
siastic over  physical   science.      They 
-^•90  -)- 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

could  readily  be  induced  to  leave  it 
and  talk  literature.  For  example, 
Was  Corneille  to  be  preferred  to  Ben- 
serade?  And  might  not  Chapelain 
be  preferred  to  either? 

They  were  perhaps  most  active  over 
questions  of  grammar  and  rhetoric. 
They  invented  many  new  phrases  and 
expressions  to  the  eternal  laughter  of 
outsiders,  and  to  their  own  supreme 
content.  Not  a  few  of  these  phrases 
survive  to  this  day  and  are  accounted 
good  French.  On  the  other  hand, 
with  this  passion  for  neologisms,  they 
seem  really  to  have  striven  for  that 
happy  medium  between  the  slipshod 
and  the  pompous  and  extravagant  type 
of  speech.  At  least  'they  made  a 
solemn  vow  that  in  conversation  they 
would  aim  in  purity  of  style  at  the 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

rooting  out  of  words  in  questionable 
taste,  and  they  proclaimed  unending 
war  against  pedants  and  provincials.' 

They  brought  about  a  radical 
change  in  spelling.  They  decided  to 
abolish  the  superfluous  letters  from 
such  words  as  teste,  hostel,  tousjours, 
goust,  and  the  like.  Such  changes  as 
they  made  still  hold  good.  To  this 
day  people  spell  these  words  tete, 
hotel,  toujours,  goiit.  Roederer  quotes 
from  Somaize  a  list  of  one  hundred 
and  thirty-four  words,  nearly  all  of 
which  owe  their  present  spelling  to 
the  influence  of  the  precieuses.  This 
is  an  interesting  fact,  for  we  have  it 
on  the  authority  of  Tallemant  that 
some  of  the  precieuses  never  learned 
to  spell  at  all. 

The  truth  is,  preciosity  includes  so 
^-  92  H— 


AND   THE  PRJ^CIEUSES 

many  contradictory  elements  that  it  is 
difficult  to  characterize  it.  One  would 
suppose  from  the  attitude  of  hostile 
critics  that  it  was  a  deadly  sin  to  be 
a  precieuse.  Whether  it  was  or  not 
seems  really  to  have  depended  upon 
the  kind  of  precieuse  one  was.  There 
were  many  varieties,  some  neither 
admirable  nor  the  reverse,  some  quite 
ridiculous.  To  this  last  class  belonged 
such  women  as  Madelon  and  Cathos 
in  the  play.  In  fact,  to  call  a  woman! 
a  precieuse  was  to  be  indefinite. 
There  must  be  a  qualifying  adjective. 
The  lady  might  be  a  precieuse  illustre, 
or  a  precieuse  grande,  or  simply  a 
precieuse  ridicule ;  and  it  was  a  long 
way  from  first  to  last.  The  chief  de- 
fect of  preciosity  as  it  showed  itself 
in  ruelles  of  the  second  and  third  \^ 
-t-  93  ^- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

order  was  its  glorifications  of  trifles. 
These  people  loved  to  play  at  literary- 
games,  but  they  had  no  great  care  for 
literature.  They  delighted  in  mere 
bagatelles,  such  as  enigmas  and  sonnets 
to  a  lady's  eyebrow.  We  are  appalled 
at  the  sight  of  Dean  Swift  spending 
his  final  melancholy  days  in  writing 
conundrums;  it  was  the  last  infirmity 
of  a  mind  which  if  not  noble  had  at 
least  noble  qualities.  But  what  shall 
we  say  when  a  whole  society  of  intel- 
ligent men  and  women  give  them- 
selves up  to  such  frivolities'?  And 
one  is  astonished  to  see  with  how 
grave  a  face  they  carried  on  their 
elaborate  fooling.  There  must  have 
been  a  few  who  would  gladly  have 
broken  away  from  bagatelles,  whether 
literary  or  conversational,  in  order  to 


JND   THE  PR£CIEUS£S 

introduce  more  wholesome  influence. 
The  courage  was  lacking.  The  pun- 
ishment for  taking  one's  ease  in  these 
charming  courts  was  that  one  con- 
formed to  what  appeared  to  be  the 
chief  source  of  their  charm.  A  man 
might  know  that  he  was  stifling  the 
higher  and  more  rugged  qualities  of 
literature,  but  he  conformed  just  the 
same. 

This  bright,  artificial  world  had  its 
historiographer.  His  name  was  So- 
maize.  He  holds  a  place  in  the  an- 
nals of  literature  not  because  he  was 
a  writer,  but  because  he  made  a  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Precieuses,  containing 
pen-portraits,  comments  on  their  phi- 
losophy, and  a  collection  of  their 
phrases  and  circumlocutions.  There 
were  two  editions  of  the  dictionary,  — 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

one  little  and  one  big.  The  *  grand ' 
dictionary  gives  the  names  of  seven 
hundred  recognized  precieuses,  never 
the  real  name,  to  be  sure,  but  a  classi- 
cal counterpart  which  was  understood 
by  the  elect. 

Somaize  defends  the  precieuses,  or 
at  least  seems  to  do  so.  He  combats 
the  popular  error  that  a  precieuse  is  a 
woman  at  least  forty-five  years  old, 
plain,  and  opposed  to  matrimony.  It 
is  a  mistake  also  to  suppose  that  the 
possession  of  wit  alone  entitles  wo- 
men to  be  called  precieuses.  Only 
they  may  be  so  designated  who  busy 
themselves  in  writing  or  in  correcting 
the  writing  of  others,  who  lay  stress 
upon  the  reading  of  romances,  and 
above  all,  who  invent  ways  of  speak- 
ing which  are  bizarre  in  their  novelty 
— I-  96  -t- 


AND   THE  PR^CIEUSES 

and  unusual  in  their  significance. 
Somaize  says  that  it  was  one  of  the 
doctrines  of  the  precieuses  that  a 
thought  was  of  no  value  when  it 
could  be  understood  by  all  the  world ; 
they  held  themselves  under  obligation 
to  speak  otherwise  than  do  common 
people,  so  that  their  ideas  might  be 
grasped  only  by  those  who  have  men- 
tal powers  above  the  vulgar.  _Thus 
he  accounts  for  their  efforts  to  destroy 
the  old  language  and  substitute  for  it 
one  that  is  not  only  new,  but  peculiar 
to  themselves. 

If  you  were  a  genuine  precieuse 
you  had  two  names,  one  the  name 
which  your  parents  gave  you,  the 
other  a  poetical  name,  —  nom  de  Par- 
nasse.  This  seems  foolish,  but  is  not 
so  foolish  as  it  seems.     I  do  not  speak 


m  — '■^ii; 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

by  the  card,  but  I  take  it  the  custom 
partly  originated  in  the  need  to  have 
a  more  euphonious  word  for  poetry 
than  is  offered  in  the  average  proper 
name.  And  we  all  know  that  privi- 
leges are  accorded  poets  which  are 
denied  to  commercial  travelers.  Lan- 
dor  addressed  a  poem  to  '  lanthe.' 
This  was  not  the  young  lady's  name ; 
she  was  a  Miss  Jones.  But  one  can- 
not use  that  sort  of  name  in  poetry 
any  more  than  he  can  E.  Mandeville 
Stubbs  or  M.  Pett  Mudge.  To  be 
sure  Wordsworth  did  it,  but  he  failed 
to  establish  the  practice  as  a  universal 
poetic  custom.  It  is  a  mere  question 
of  euphony.  Wilkinson  sounds  harsh 
in  poetry,  yet  the  ear  hears  with  de- 
light such  phrases  as  'Sidney's  sister 
Pembroke's  mother.'      Those    words 


AND   THE  PMCIEUSES 

were  not  without  grace  long  before 
they  acquired  the  meaning  which  we 
attach  to  them. 

Moreover  this  renaming  of  people 
is  an  innocent  sophistication  which 
has  the  sanction  of  antiquity.  It  pre- 
vails in  all  literature  of  a  certain  age. 
Men  were  never  themselves,  but  al- 
ways somebody  else,  and  the  most 
fashionable  of  gentlemen  and  ladies 
loved  to  think  that  they  were  shep- 
herds and  shepherdesses.  Shake- 
speare does  not  speak  of  Marlowe  as 
the  '  late  Christopher  Marlowe,'  or  as 
the  '  distinguished  playwright  and 
poet  who  has  so  recently  died,'  but 
calls  him  '  shepherd.'  Malherbe  re- 
christened  the  Marquise  de  Ram- 
bouillet  Arthenice^  an  anagram  on 
Catherine.     This   fact   has   disturbed 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

some  critics  like  the  readable  Paul 
Albert,  for  example,  who  calls  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet  a  '  hot-house '  in 
which  were  nursed  exotic  plants 
brought  from  Italy  and  Spain,  plants 
of  no  particular  use  except  to  show 
Frenchmen  what  queer  literary  flora 
was  produced  in  foreign  lands. 
/  Preciosity  is  after  all  only  a  matter 
'of  degree.  It  is  well  to  be  refined ; 
the  sin  of  the  precieuses  consisted  in 
refining  upon  refinement  until  spon- 
taneity and  naturalness  were  entirely 
[lost.  Take  that  question  of  the 
choice  of  words.  At  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet it  seemed  best  to  avoid  cer- 
tain words  and  to  substitute  circum- 
locutions. There  is  no  harm  in  this. 
Let  language  be  made  as  pliant  as 
possible.     But  let   this  flexibility  be 

-i-  100  +- 


JND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

obtained  by  legitimate  means,  and  let 
good  sense  reign  in  the  deliberations 
of  the  self-appointed  judges.  If  it  be 
a  sin  to  use  a  circumlocution  instead 
of  a  plain  term,  then  are  all  men  sin- 
ners. We  should  be  lenient  towards 
those  who  use  words  to  conceal 
thoughts :  still  more  towards  those 
who  use  words  to  express  with  re- 
straint a  thought  which  otherwise 
might  come  with  dismaying  blunt- 
ness.  For  example,  there  are  certain 
vigorous  old  English  words  which 
we  rarely  utter.  It  is  not  because 
they  are  coarse  or  indecent,  but  be- 
cause they  are  definite  and  positive. 
Such  words  are  entirely  reputable 
and  more  than  expressive.  No  feel- 
ing of  prejudice  attaches  to  them 
when  they  occur  in  the  Scripture  les- 

-t-  lOI  •*- 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOVILLET 

son,  or  are  met  with  in  literature  of  a 
robust  type  like  the  plays  of  Shake- 
speare or  the  novels  of  Fielding.  For 
conversational  purposes  they  may  be 
said  to  have  disappeared. 

The  reason  may  be  in  part  this. 
The  public  classifies  words  for  itself, 
with  little  heed  to  the  classification  of 
grammarians  and  philologists.  The 
public  takes  many  words  and  puts 
them  in  either  of  two  categories,  out- 
of-door  words  and  drawing-room 
words.  Moreover  it  is  not  always 
thought  a  virtue  to  bring  out-of-door 
expressions  into  the  drawing-room. 
It  may  be  daring  and  '  original,'  but 
as  a  matter  of  taste  it  is  as  if  an  oars- 
man, to  show  his  originality  and  in- 
dependence, were  to  go  out  to  dine 
in  the  costume  in  which  he  had  been 

-I-  102  ••- 


AND   THE  PRiCIEUSES 

rowing  in  his  shell.  People  admit  / 
that  there  are  ranks  or  orders  of  words, 
admit  it  by  their  practice  even  when 
they  do  not  theorize  about  it.  The 
proof  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  inva- 
riably suppress  certain  words  and  use 
an  equivalent.  ■■^ 

Such  suppression  is  not  in  itself 
madness,  but  that  way  the  madness 
of  preciosity  lies.  If  we  habitually 
use  a  synonym  which  is  rather  worse 
than  the  word  supplanted,  if  we  strain 
at  gnats  and  swallow  camels,  we  de- 
monstrate anew  that  the  spirit  of  pre- 
ciosity is  still  potent.  Indeed  the 
precieuses  are  not  dead ;  male  and 
female  they  still  exist.  The  modern 
spirit  manifests  itself  in  a  hundred 
ways.  Sometimes  it  runs  to  deca- 
dent prose  and  verse  in  the  effort  to 


<&  — "**^**^ 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

be  striking.  Sometimes  it  prompts 
to  the  printing  of  books  on  paper 
which  might  have  been  made  to  wrap 
steaks  in,  and  the  illustration  of  one's 
poetic  ideas  by  means  of  decorations 
rather  less  intelligible  than  an  ordi- 
nary nightmare.  Sometimes  it  finds 
its  highest  joy  in  being  published  in 
an  edition  so  '  limited '  that  after  the 
personal  friends  have  been  supplied 
the  volume  is  at  once  catalogued  as 
'  scarce  and  out  of  print.'  There  is 
nothing  reprehensible  in  being  out  of 
print ;  most  books  are  rather  better  so. 
But  when  the  first  edition  of  Poems, 
chiefly  in  the  Scottish  Dialect^  published 
at  Kilmarnock,  became  scarce  and 
out  of  print,  it  was  for  reasons  un- 
known to  amateurs  of  preciosity. 
In  these  and  similar  matters  we  are 
-t- 104  •»- 


AND   THE  PR&  CI  BUSES 

taught  to  believe  that  good  sense  and 
good  taste  prevailed  at  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet.  The  testimony  of 
Chapelain,  already  quoted,  is  conclu- 
sive. Other  and  quite  as  good  testi- 
mony is  not  wanting.  In  the  outer 
circles  of  preciosity,  however,  it  was 
quite  otherwise.  A  thoroughgoing 
precieuse,  to  whom  words  were  rather 
more  important  than  ideas,  would  not 
speak  of  her  ears  ;  she  would  say  the 
gates  of  my  understanding ;  she  would 
speak  of  night  as  the  mother  of  silence, 
war  as  the  mother  of  discord ;  a  hat 
was  not  a  hat,  it  was  the  defer  of  the 
weather  (I'affronteur  des  temps) ;  chairs 
were  the  indisp  ens  able s  of  conversation; 
and  tears  were  the  pearls  of  Iris :  no 
one  shed  tears,  he  shed  pearls.  Teeth 
were  the  furniture  of  the  mouth  ;  a  ser- 
-i- 105  -1- 


•I?  '"Tl^ 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

geant  of  police  was  the  bad  angel  of 
criminals ;  a  mirror  was  known  as  a 
painter  of  supreme  fidelity ;  and  soup 
masqueraded  under  the  phrase,  the 
harmony  of  two  elements. 

These  and  similar  expressions  to  the 
number  of  several  hundred  were  col- 
lected by  Somaize  from  the  lips  of 
people  who  used  them,  or  from  the 
letters  and  romances  of  the  time,  and 
are  to  be  found  in  his  Grand  Diction- 
naire  des  Pretieuses.  A  scientific  clas- 
sification of  them  is  given  in  the 
fourth  volume  of  the  Histoire  de  la 
Langue  et  de  la  Litterature  fran^aise^ 
now  publishing  under  the  editorial 
direction  of  that  distinguished  scholar, 
M.  Petit  de  Julleville.  The  malady 
was  widespread.  Moliere  himself  was 
not  wholly  able  to  escape  it.  Nei- 
— 1-  io6  -I— 


AND   THE  PRE CIE  USES 

ther  was  Corneille.  In  much  the 
same  way  Shakespeare  dropped  into 
occasional  Euphuistic  forms  even 
when  he  was  not  laughing  at  Eu- 
phuism. 

When  preciosity  reached  the  coun- 
try towns  it  became  more  ridiculous 
than  ever,  and  fell  quite  naturally 
under  the  lash  of  the  satirist,  Mo- 
liere  is  believed  to  have  tried  the  ef- 
fect of  the  Precieuses  ridicules  in  the 
provinces  before  he  produced  it  in 
Paris.  There  were  so  many  pre- 
cieuses in  Lyons  that  Somaize  de- 
voted twenty-eight  pages  to  them  in 
an  appendix  to  the  Dictionnaire. 
They  were  to  be  found  at  Bordeaux, 
at  Aix,  at  Poitiers,  at  Aries,  and  at 
Montpellier.  In  the  Voyage  de  Cha- 
pelle  et  de  Bachaumont  is  an  account 
-1- 107  -t- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

of  a  visit  to  a  gathering  of  country 
precieuses,  the  very  type  which  Mo- 
liere  must  often  have  encountered 
during  his  years  of  provincial  travel. 
Chapelle  describes  their  affected  and 
pretentious  airs.  He  satirizes  their 
tawdry  rhetoric,  and  turns  them  into 
ridicule  by  making  them  talk  of  the 
'  divine  beauty  '  of  Mademoiselle  de 
Scudery,  and  speak  of  Pellisson  as  an 
Adonis.  When  one  of  these  ladies 
referred  to  D'Assoucy  as  a  member 
of  the  French  Academy,  Chapelle  de- 
clares that  he  and  his  companions 
were  seized  with  so  irresistible  a  desire 
to  laugh  that  they  were  obliged  to 
leave  the  room  and  leave  the  house ; 
they  went  back  to  their  inn  to  have 
their  laugh  out  at  leisure. 

There  was  abundant   material  for 
-)-  io8  -J- 


*^^"  >' 


JND  THE  PR^CIEUSES 

satire  in  the  externals  of  preciosity, 
as  may  be  learned  by  reading  Livet's 
account  of  a  '  morning  '  at  the  house 
of  some  representative  blue-stock- 
ing. These  people  lived  comic  opera 
and  did  n't  know  it.  One  would 
like  to  have  seen  such  a  gathering, 
the  high-priestess  throned  upon  her 
couch,  the  spaces  on  either  side  of 
the  bed  (the  ruelles)  filled  with  ladies 
and  gallants,  the  fluttering  of  fans  and 
feathers,  the  rustle  and  gleam  of  satin 
and  silk,  the  little  beribboned  canes 
which  they  waved  incessantly  while 
they  talked;  the  talk  itself,  infinitely 
clever  in  some  cases  and  infinitely 
absurd  in  others ;  the  flourishes  and 
bows,  the  compliments  and  witti- 
cisms ;  and  then  the  general  serenity 
which    filled   every   breast,  the   con- 

■H-   109-1- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

sciousness  that  no  vulgar  sound  could 
mar  the  turn  of  a  verse  or  the  climax 
of  an  apostrophe,  for  the  door-knocker 
was  carefully  muffled. 


no 


VI 

JLHE  Marquise  de  Rambouillet 
died  in  1665.  For  some  time  before 
her  death  the  salon  had  been  but  a 
shadow  of  its  former  self  The  mem- 
ory of  the  great  days  survived,  but 
the  great  days  were  no  longer  pos- 
sible. New  ideas  had  begun  to 
mould  the  literature  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Preciosity  was  not 
annihilated  by  Moliere's  attack,  but 
more  than  ever  it  became  a  reproach 
and  a  byword.  The  latter-day  pre- 
-t-  II I  ■+- 


HOTEL  DE  RJMBOUILLET 

cieuses  had  the  name  but  not  the 
power.  They  might  summon  spirits 
from  the  vasty  deep,  but  the  only 
response  was  the  irreverent  laughter  of 
spectators. 

That  preciosity  had  many  virtues 
cannot  be  denied.  It  was  exceeding 
picturesque  also ;  and  picturesque- 
ness  alone  is  a  virtue  for  which  we 
ought  to  be  grateful.  The  pages 
which  contain  its  history  are  among 
the  most  fascinating  in  the  annals  of 
French  literature.  The  Marquise 
was  in  many  ways  a  great  woman. 
She  was  admirable  in  her  own  day, 
she  is  admirable  in  ours.  It  was  no 
small  accomplishment  to  have  had 
a  refining  influence  upon  one's  day 
and  generation.  It  was  no  little  or 
unworthy    thing    to    have    retained 

-••  112-t- 


AND   THE  PRi  CI  BUSES 

one's  social  supremacy  through  so 
many  years,  and  by  entirely  legiti- 
mate methods.  Historians  have  ex- 
aggerated the  intellectual  frivolity  of 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  After  all  it 
seems  less  culpable  to  be  frivolous 
over  words  and  ideas  than  over  cards ; 
and  if  it  is  a  question  of  ultimate 
idiocy,  charades  are  no  worse  than 
dancing.  Let  us  not  exaggerate  the 
significance  of  trifles.  Incredible  as 
it  may  appear,  I  have  seen  human 
beings  playing  hjalma  ;  the  men  were 
college-graduates  and  the  women 
belonged  to  clubs.  If,  then,  we  are 
inclined  to  laugh  at  a  society  which 
could  divide  into  two  hostile  camps 
on  the  question  which  of  two  sonnets 
was  the  better,  we  may  take  comfort 
in   the    compensating    thought    that 


HOTEL  DE  RAMBOUILLET 

these  people  actually  knew  a  sonnet 
when  they  saw  one. 

The  statement  may  be  hard  to 
prove,  but  without  doubt  the  circle 
of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  better  de- 
serves our  respect  than  the  best  so- 
ciety of  any  favorite  centre  at  the 
present  day.  It  was  the  misfortune 
of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  to  have  out- 
lived its  usefulness.  But  that  may 
happen  to  any  man,  any  woman,  any 
organization.  It  was  also  its  misfor- 
tune to  have  been  imitated,  and  badly 
imitated.  Yet  the  genuine  is  none 
the  less  genuine  because  the  spurious 
exists.  '  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  has  its 
place,  and  that  a  great  place  in  the 
history  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
It  was  the  incomparable  vestibule  of 
modern  culture.     The    men   of  that 

-H    I  14  -»- 


AND   THE  PR&CIEUSES 

generation  had  no  reason  to  regret 
that  they  had  frequented  the  "blue 
room  "  of  Arthenice.  Some  no  doubt 
learned  affectation,  but  more  learned 
to  think  delicately,  and  all  to  speak 
well' 


"5 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 
NOTE 


1  HIS  sketch  of  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
will  serve  no  real  purpose  unless  it  stimu- 
lates the  reader  to  consult  a  few,  at  least, 
of  the  many  books  and  essays  in  which 
French  critical  scholarship  and  genius  have 
interpreted  the  history  of  seventeenth  cen- 
tury literature.  Larroumet  well  says  that 
one  might  make  a  small  library  out  of  the 
books  devoted  to  the  societe  precieuse. 
The  following  bibliography  is  for  the  use 
of  *■  gentle  '  readers ;  it  is  not  addressed  to 
-«-  117  •»- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

literary  specialists  or  professional  bibliogra- 
phers. 

Having  in  mind,  therefore,  the  amateur 
of  good  books  rather  than  the  pundit,  I 
have  grouped  the  materials  relating  to 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet  and  the  Precieuses 
thus : — 

First  :  The  more  or  less  condensed  no- 
tices to  be  found  in  manuals  of  French 
literature.  These  works  are  inexpensive 
and  accessible.  They  present  the  subject 
in  epitome. 

1 .  Lanson  (Gustave),  Histoire  de  la  Ltt- 
t'erature  fran^ahe.       Paris,  Hachette,  1898, 

PP-  368-391- 

2.  Lintilhac  (Eugene),  Litter atur e fr an- 

^aise.  Paris,  Andre  fils,  1895.  Deuxieme 
partie,  pp.  9—16. 

3.  Bruneti6re  (Ferdinand),  Manuel  de 
V  histoire  de  la  Litter  atur  e  fran^aise.  Paris, 
Delagrave,  1898,  pp.  106-130. 

^-  118  +- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

Each  of  the  above-named  books  is  rich 
in  bibliographical  references. 

4.  Geruzez  (Eugene),  Histoire  de  la  Lit- 
t'erature  fran^aise.     Paris,  Didier,  1869,  pp. 

35-63- 

5.  Albert    (Paul),    Litt'erature  fran^aise 

des  origines  a  la  Jin  du  XVI ^   Steele.      Paris, 
Hachette,  1881,  pp.  387-404. 

6.  Pergameni  (Hermann),  Histoire  ge- 
nerals de  la  Litt'erature  fran^aise.  Paris, 
Alcan,  1889,  pp.  209-213. 

Second  :  Extended  accounts  and  mono- 
graphs. 

I.  Petit  de  Julie ville  (L.),  Histoire  de 
la  Langue  et  de  la  Litt'erature  fran^aise. 
Paris,  Colin,  1897.  "^ol.  IV.,  chapters  i, 
2,  and  7. 

This  magnificent  work  is  being  written 
by  collaboration.  The  chapters  in  ques- 
tion  are  by  Petit  de  Julleville,  Bourciez, 

-t-  119  H- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

and  Morillot.     Excellent  bibliographies  at 
the  end  of  each  chapter. 

2.  Demogeot  (Jacques),  Tableau  de  la 
Litt'erature  fran^aise  au  XVII ^  Siecle  avant 
Corneille  et  Descartes.  Paris,  Hachette, 
1859,  PP-  205-300. 

3.  Livet  (Ch.-L.),  Precieux  et  Pr'ecteuses^ 
caracteres  et  moeurs  litt'era'ires  du  XVII^ 
Siecle.      Paris,  Didier,  1859. 

4.  Roederer  (P.  L.),  Memoire  pour  servir 
a  rhistoire  de  la  Societe  polie  en  France. 
Paris,  Didot,  1835. 

Privately  printed  and  expensive.  Mod- 
est Parisian  booksellers  will  sometimes  part 
with  the  volume  for  ten  dollars.  There  is 
a  copy  in  the  Boston  Public  Library. 

5.  Cousin  (Victor),  La  Societe  fran^aise 
au  XVII^  Siecle  d'apres  la  Grand  Cyrus. 
Paris,  Perrin,  1886,  two  vols.  —  La  'Jeu- 
nesse  de  Mme.  de  Longueville.  Paris,  Perrin, 
1897.  —  Mme.  de  Sable.,  Paris,  Didier,  1882. 

-I-  1 20 -I- 


•s= 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

6.  Brunetidre  (F.),  Etudes  Critiques^ 
deuxieme  serie  :  La  Societe  pr'edeuse^  a 
review  of  La  Jeunesse  de  Fl'echier  by  the 
Abbe  Fabre. 

In  this  essay  Brunetiere  makes  his  often 
quoted  distinction  between  the  esprit  gau- 
lois  and  the  esprit  precieux. 

7.  Larroumet  (Gustave),  Notice  histo- 
rique  sur  les  Precieuses  ridicules.  Paris,  Gar- 
nier. 

This  book  should  be  in  the  hands  of  all 
students.  The  eighty  pages  of  introduction 
are  in  the  highest  degree  suggestive  and 
informing. 

8.  Crane  (Thomas  Frederick),  La  Soci- 
ete fran^aise  au  XVII^  Siecle.  New  York, 
Putnam,  1889. 

Contains  a  large  and  carefully  selected 

group    of   passages   relating    to    Hotel    de 

Rambouillet,  nearly  all  from  contemporary 

writers.    There  are  copious  notes,  an  intro- 

-t-  121  •»- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

duction  of  thirty-four  pages,  a  bibliography, 
and  a  reproduction  of  the  '  Carte  du 
Tendre.' 

9.  Breitinger  (H.),  Aus  neuern  Littera- 
turen.  Zurich,  1879,  pp.  1—54.  Der 
Salon  Rambouillet  und  seine  culturgeschicht- 
liche  Bedeutung. 

10.  Colombey  (Emile),  Ruelles^  Salons^ 
et  Cabarets.     Paris,  Dentu,  1892. 

This  list  does  not  begin  to  exhaust  the 
number  of  critical  and  historical  studies. 
The  reader  who  consults  these  will  have 
no  difficulty  in  getting  track  of  what  he 
wants.  The  numerous  passages  scattered 
through  the  various  writings  of  Sainte- 
Beuve  should  be  read. 

Third  :  Direct  sources,  among  which 
are :  — 

I.  Tallemant  de  R6aux  :    Les  Histori- 
ettes^  3®  edition,  De  Monmerque  et  Paulin 
Paris.      Paris,  Techener,  1862,  six  vols. 
-+  122  -1- 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE 

2.  Voiture  (Vincent),  Les  CEuvres  de 
Monsieur  de  Voiture^  7®  edition.  Paris, 
Thomas  Jolly,  1665. 

A  modern  edition  by  A.  Roux,  Paris, 
1856. 

3.  Somaize  (Baudeau  de),  Le  Grand 
Dict'tonnaire  des  Pr'etieuses^  edited  by  Livet. 
Paris,  Jannet,  1856,  2  vols.,  Bibliotheque 
elzevirienne. 

4.  Balzac  :  Les  CEuvres  de  Monsieur  de 
Balzac.  Paris,  Thomas  Jolly,  1665,  2 
vols.,  folio. 

A   modern    edition    by    Moreau,    Paris, 

1854. 

5.  Scudfery  (Madeleine  de),  Artamene  ou 

le  Grand  Cyrus.  Paris,  Courbe,  1649—53. 
Other  direct  sources  are  the  works  of 
Godeau,  Sarrazin,  Benserade,  Chapelain's 
letters,  De  Pure's  La  Pretieuse^  ou  le  mystere 
de  la  Ruelle^  Bary's  Dhomme  de  cour  and 
Rh'etorique  fran^aise. 

-H23^- 


PRINTED  BY  H.  O.  HOUGHTON  &  CO. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 

U.S.A. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FJC^ 

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AA    000  871806    6 


